Pale Kings (Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

  All over Krauslung, others were doing the same. Slowly, aching, the city slowly picked itself up and dusted itself off. Beds were scrounged; houses overturned and cleaned out; histories and possessions dug out from beneath piles of rubble. Victory tasted sour in the mouth for most. But it was victory at least. The gods had smiled through the storm clouds, be it wanly.

  Tyrfing, Durnus, and the others were busy seeing to various things. Against all odds and defying all rumours, Modren had discovered a familiar figure hidden away in the darkest prisons of the Arkathedral. The old Arkmage Åddren was carried out over the broken doors of his fortress on the shoulders of the remaining loyal Written. He was a skeleton of a man. His tangled hair had grown to his hips and the old man could barely speak.

  Elessi and Lerel stood with Eyrum. The big Siren stood stoically silent, acting as a wall between the women. Elessi had nothing to say. Lerel’s teeth chattered.

  In the middle of it all stood Farden, immovable like a statue, ignoring the rain on his head and the throbbing of his injured hand and broken ribs. He didn’t even blink. Nobody talked to him. They could tell from the look in his eyes that he wanted to be left alone. The mage was waiting for it all to make sense. He wondered if it ever would. Sadly, it wouldn’t make sense to him for a long time. Farden stared to the south, where he could catch glimpses of the sea through the gaps in the fractured buildings. He could hear the muffled weeping of the dragons behind him. Farfallen lay nearby, his golden eyes still open. Had Farden turned around, he would have seen them staring right at him.

  Durnus tried once to talk to him. He put his arms around the mage and whispered in his ear. ‘I’m sorry Farden, for everything. I couldn’t tell you. I tried, but I couldn’t. I thought I could spare you all of this. I’m sorry, old friend. We’ll find your daughter, don’t worry.’ Farden could barely look at him, and his old friend had retreated.

  Elessi came to tend his missing finger. She did not speak. The maid just bandaged his hand and after letting her hand linger on his shoulder for a moment, she left. Farden watched her go.

  To the mage, the city was a grey blur, full of shuffling and muttering. Farden didn’t dare look around at the bloody gutters, nor the quiet crowds, nor the piles of bodies on the street corners. He didn’t dare take a peek. Farden knew he would have broken apart and shattered like glass. His heart thumped sluggishly against his ribs. He was to blame for all of it, and all of it to come. He knew what he had to do to make it right.

  It was some time before he moved, and when he did, he left without a sound or a word. Some saw him leave and thought nothing of it, others missed it completely, but later on they would search the entire city for him and find nothing of the mage. Glassy-eyed and far away, Farden walked to the city gates, and after one final look back at the city, he kept walking.

  The sky exhaled, and the gods hung their heads. Nothing could be said. Nothing could be done. Even Heimdall looked away. The gods began the work of gathering their prayers, their power, for there were a lot of them to gather that day.

  Only one stood unmoving, and he stared down at the glittering pendant of rock hanging far below. Loki frowned and pressed his fist against the stone of the walls. He turned his head and gazed at the darkness hanging between the stars. There, on the plains of nothingness, something in the shadows grinned back at him, and rubbed its claws.

  Dread and hungry anticipation, separated by a bridge of rainbows.

  Epilogue

  In the wake of war

  It was once said by one of the first Arkmages that the magick of Emaneska was not in its mages or its wizards, nor its spell books or its potions, but in the inexorable and persevering nature of its people.

  It took three days to clear Krauslung of the dead, and a further three to bury them. The remaining grey ships were packed with the fallen and driven out to sea to burn. That night they lit the horizon like a second sunset.

  Slowly the city was turned the right way up. The Lost Clans and the Sirens returned home, as did the Albion armies and the others from the north and the west. Old Arkmage Åddren died peacefully in his bed a month after the battle. He was weak and past help, but he saw his city saved, and his final orders were to appoint Durnus and Tyrfing as the new Arkmages after him. The celebrations lasted for a month, and the citizens couldn’t have been happier. The Arka were a shadow of their former glory, but a shadow nonetheless.

  As for Durnus, he spent his first months as Arkmage ordering search after search for Farden, confident he would eventually find the mage sitting quietly in a tavern, or hiding in the hold of a ship somewhere. But he never did. Nobody knew where he was. The mage had completely disappeared.

  Tyrfing was equally distressed, but he too held a stubborn belief that Farden would return, and so he waited like the others. Eyrum finally returned to Hjaussfen for the crowning of Towerdawn and his rider Aelya. Lerel went with him. Elessi stayed in the service of the new Arkmages, insisting they needed a maid. She never spoke of her night with the god Thron to anyone.

  Durnus never discussed what had happened with Jergan. The bite-marks on his shoulder never quite healed, but the lycan’s poison had done its painful work. It had ripped the vampyre curse from his veins but its legacy was his blindness. In a way, Durnus saw it as a punishment for his fear and inaction. Nevertheless, he was his former self once again, a pale king, a nefalim, and it was a fact he wisely kept from the Arka and the newly-reinstated magick council. Only Tyrfing and a handful of others ever knew the truth. Together, the two Arkmages prepared for the inevitable return of Farden’s daughter. Spies were sent out in search of her and defences were slowly gathered.

  Unbeknownst to them all, even to the gods and Heimdall’s eyes, the seer Lilith was far away and biding her precious time. When she heard of Vice’s death, deep in her dusty cellar, on the outskirts of a tiny town deep in the wilderness, she had smiled at the news, and cackled quietly to herself, twiddling her seerstones in her palm. Vice had asked his questions, but he hadn’t asked the right questions, she chuckled under her breath. People never did. The small bundle by her side slept on peacefully, utterly unaware of her destiny. For the moment, she was innocent.

  It was one year later before anyone found Farden.

  Far to the west, Albion was still in the grip of a cold and snowy winter. In the Dornoch hills, near a little town called Beinnh, ugly weather was brewing. The sky was like stew and it swirled above the wind-blown hills. Chunks of cloud floated around, blissfully unaware. Thunder rumbled as the winds stirred the heavens. The sun hid.

  The ground was frozen solid. A snow had fallen the day before and it crunched under the boots of the men. Six of them there were, and they trudged through the ankle-biting snow in single file. Their boots moaned and creaked like rickety floorboards. Their clothes were thick and lined with deer fur to keep the wind at bay.

  They walked for an hour before they found it; a small wooden shack set into the side of a hill. It sat in the lee of the slope and was fashioned from corrugated iron and slats of pilfered wood. A skinny chimney coughed black smoke and soot into the brittle air. The men pointed and muttered and walked on with their faces down and hands deep in their pockets. Only one of them carried a sword, and he marched out in front. He was nervous; he had heard the rumours.

  When they reached the shack, nobody wanted to knock. It took a full minute of whispered arguing before a man sighed in annoyance and tossed back his hood and scarf. There was a coat of arms on his breast: of a shield with a black cat and crossed daggers. The man had a shock of red hair and a matching goatee. He had the eyes of a weasel, quick and cunning. He was well-built, stocky, and tall to most, a hair over six feet tall. He pushed his men aside and rapped smartly on the door three times.

  There was no answer save the wind. It howled around them. The man tapped his boots impatiently and shivered.

  ‘Maybe he’s not in,’ said the man with the sword.

  The red-haired man shot him a dark look and spat something bla
ck into the snow. ‘Of course he is,’ he said, and reached for the door-handle. Before his men could protest, he twisted it and went in. The men swapped nervous glances and quickly followed.

  It was dark inside the shack, midnight-dark and full of acrid smoke. The red-haired man covered his nose with a handkerchief, trying to ignore the smells that assaulted him. He squinted at the smoky darkness, making out a wooden stool, a threadbare armchair, and other mismatched and useless things. ‘Hello?’ he called, quietly at first, then louder. He headed towards the rear of the shack.

  A dim glow caught his eye, and he peered into the shadows. ‘Hello? I’ve come to make you a proposition.’

  Words and shapes, written in white light, began to glow in the darkness. The man squinted at them, trying to make them out, but they were in a strange and foreign language. Lines and lines of them hunched there for a moment, before they were extinguished. Then a small orange flame hissed into being and hovered in mid-air where the glowing script had been. The red haired man stood his ground. ‘I said I’ve come to make you an offer,’ he said.

  ‘You should leave, now.’

  ‘I won’t leave until you hear me out,’ asserted the man.

  The flame shifted to the side, and the man caught a glimpse of a face in the flickering light, of grey-green eyes and a scarred cheek. It was him. ‘What is your name?’ asked the face.

  ‘We met once before. I am the Duke of Kiltyrin, and I hear you’re good at killing people.’

  ‘I’ve killed a few,’ muttered the face. Fingers wrapped around the flame and snuffed it out. The Duke looked around. He could hear footsteps and rustling.

  ‘Well,’ said Kiltyrin, ‘I want you to kill someone for me.’

  ‘And who might that be?’ said a voice.

  The Duke tapped the side of his nose, hoping the mage could see him. ‘Let’s keep that a secret for now, shall we? Will you do it?’

  There was a moment of heavy breathing. Teeth sucked at lips in thought. ‘For the right amount of coin, I might…’ suggested the voice.

  The Duke smiled wolfishly. ‘Name your price.’

  Acknowledgements

  There should be a warning that comes with being an author, something along the lines of - ‘Warning: the occupation of “Author” may cause many sleepless nights, excess caffeine consumption and addiction, wearing down of the fingers, daydreaming, incessant imagination, ludicrous Twitter bios, and strange affectations such as top hats and pet racoons.’ But there is another warning that should come along with such an occupation, and that is the overwhelming and startling support of people such as you, yes you, that take the time to congratulate and encourage authors such as myself.

  After the release of The Written, the first book in this series, I received such a great response from people all over the world, from reviews to ratings to simple retweets. If you were one of these people, then I thank you. I dedicate this novel to you as I did at the start of the book. Give yourself a clap on the back. Your kind encouragement has kept me going and solidified my own stubborn resolve to keep at this occupation of mine. I’m glad you enjoyed The Written. I hope Pale Kings met all your expectations too.

  Once again, my utmost thanks to my dear friends and official editors, Nancy Clark, Sarah West, and Sheila Billings. You have been so patient and invaluable during the final stages of this book.

  My eternal gratitude to Claudia as well. She has the patience of a saint (or a criminal mastermind) and motivation to match. For all the months of putting up with me, my brutal schedules, and my occasional hermitic lifestyle, thank you.

  Acknowledgements also go out to Zach, Karl, Roger, Mikael, Paul and Carol, Mike, Helen, Fran, Sam, and also the countless bands and artists who have sonically inspired me through the writing stages.

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