Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

  Tyrfing clapped as hard as any. He grinned like a mad man, happy for the couple, happy for the crowd, happy for the day, and happy that he had delivered his lines. He looked across the clapping, cheering crowd of Krauslung elite and met every eye he could. Then he looked down at Durnus, and found him sat rigid as a flagpole, not a single iota of emotion save for a cold dread on his pale face. In that moment, hands frozen mid-clap, Tyrfing knew what Durnus had heard. Behind the roar and noise of the crowd, the pealing of bells could be heard. Two bells, in fact, high in the towers of the Arkathedral. Bells whose peals might as well have been the sound of axes falling on bare necks.

  Durnus got to his feet. There was an edge to his jaw that worried Tyrfing. ‘Modren,’ he said. But Modren was too busy holding his bride and waving to the crowd. ‘Modren!’ he barked, startling the Undermage.

  ‘What?’ Modren asked, and then followed Tyrfing’s eyes down to Durnus. The Arkmage spread his hands wide and felt the air.

  ‘Do you feel it?’ he asked.

  Modren clenched his fist. Elessi put a hand on his steel chest. ‘What’s wrong? What’s going on? Is it… ? No…’ she said, her mouth falling open. Her cheeks, so red mere moments ago, ran white. ‘No, not today! She can’t!’ she cried.

  Modren kissed her one more time and then gently pushed her away. ‘Get in the Spire, now! Take as many as you can!’

  ‘Modren…?’ she whimpered, scared. She stood alone at the scales, hands clutching her golden dress. The crowd was still clapping.

  Modren’s eyes were wild, juggling so many emotions. Fear, guilt, dread, anger, they were all there. ‘Go, Elessi! Get to safety!’ he ordered. She grabbed him by his steel collar and dragged him close, eyes almost even wilder than his.

  ‘I didn’t wait all this time to marry a corpse, you hear me? You better come back to me. You understand me, husband? You come back alive on our wedding day.’

  Modren nodded, as sure as anything. ‘You’re not escaping now, Elessi, don’t you worry.’

  Elessi leant to kiss him again, but Modren was already marching down the carpet, Durnus and Tyrfing in tow. Modren wrenched his sword from its scabbard and lifted it high into the air. ‘Written! With me!’ he yelled, and a dozen figures barged their way out of the crowd, swords held high in unison and crackling with fire and sparks. The fight was on.

  Farden tasted grit in his mouth. Sour, crunchy grit between his teeth. He spat and rolled onto his side. His arms were numb from the shock of the spell. They could barely lift themselves, never mind his body. He floundered like a fish in the grass.

  His hand encountered something sharp, jagged, and wet. Farden shifted his head and found the body of a young mage lying behind him, broken and awkward. Bringlin. His red eyes stared up at the sky, blood running from their corners. His armour was ripped open at the chest and painted a muddy red. Steel, bent backwards and feathered like paper.

  Farden shivered as a breeze sprang up around him. He swivelled around to try to unfasten the mage’s sword. His daughter was still standing motionless in the grass. That old woman was crawling away from her as fast as her knobbled knees could move, heading for safety. For some reason she kept looking back at him, hissing something venomous, shouting to Samara. She was far too busy to listen.

  Eyes heavy, body screaming, inches from falling unconscious, Farden fiddled with the buckle of the mage’s scabbard. His fingers were slippery with Bringlin’s blood, but somehow he managed to get it undone. He yanked it from the man’s belt, and held it tight to his chest. Now all he had to do was get up.

  Farden looked around. He could see other bodies moving. Some crawling to safety, others trying to staunch their frantic bleeding, wailing at broken faces and shattered bone. A scattering of mages were trying to get to their feet. They were having the same trouble as Farden. Their limbs were as dead as Bringlin.

  The breeze swiftly turned into a wind. Farden could feel the ground trembling beneath him. He stared up at the sky. It was a blue so pure and close that it felt as though he could reach up and smudge it with his thumb. He lay back and let the wind fan his face. He felt his eyes grow heavy…

  Elessi. The name slapped him. The wedding was barely a mile away. Farden could hear bells tolling, or was that just a ringing in his ears? He prayed it was the bells. At least they would have warning of this cataclysm. Elessi would be safe.

  A blur of white and brown flashed past his eyes. A sharp keening wail made him flinch. A hunter’s cry, piercing and terrifying. Farden lifted his head to watch the gryphon swoop down, claws outstretched and beak wide. Any normal person would have soiled themselves with fear. Samara broke her concentration just long enough to move her hand and meet the plummeting Ilios with a bolt of glimmering white light. Farden’s head snapped back as the spell ricocheted, sending another round of stars to burst in his eyes. When he’d recovered, he scrambled onto his elbows, blinking frantically.

  Ilios was nowhere to be seen. Only a few long feathers pirouetted in the building wind. Samara had raised her hands to the sky again, eyes closed, deep in concentration. ‘Ilios!’ he yelled, as loud as his raw throat and bruised lungs would allow. He thumped the grass with his fist. Gods, this girl was a monster. Farden grimaced as he stared at her. A beautiful monster, so terrifyingly, tormentingly close.

  The nearby mages were beginning to make a stand. Surely this was what the Arkmages had prepared for? Catch her away from the city. Pen her in with fire and flame. Strength in pure overwhelming numbers. But where were the reinforcements? The swarm of new recruits? The rest of the Winter Regiment? The army? The Written? Samara stood unchallenged, save for a handful of tottering mages and one paralysed Farden.

  It was as though Krauslung had heard him. Like a swarm of bees, figures broke from the city gates and began to form up in ranks. Soldiers and guards peeled from the screaming crowds and began to march. Boots trampled the grass. Spears levelled. Hundreds upon hundreds, ready to fight this one, single assailant. It was surreal, yet nobody spared a moment to scribble its poetry down, or to do justice to it with paint. There was work to be done.

  Farden ached to join them. Whether it was necessity, anger, or the fact it was his daughter, his duty, his selfish right to be the one who killed her, he ached for it. If only his legs would do him the courtesy of answering his pleas. As he struggled, he watched the soldiers split into two pincers. They were at least half an hour away, but running fast. The nearest were a glittering sea of fresh armour, a mixture of grim faces and fearful ones. Strength in numbers always called for new recruits.

  Farden tried to stall her, to give them some precious time. ‘Samara! Stop!’ he bellowed over the wind. It got fiercer with every passing moment. His daughter’s name still felt foreign coming from his mouth. ‘SAMARA!’ he tried again.

  She barely spared him a flick of her eyes. She was deep in concentration. Farden squinted in the wind as it whipped his face. He could see the veins popping out from her skin, even at that distance. Sweat was trying to run down her face. A whirlwind of dirt, stones, and uprooted grass spun around her feet. A few feathers too, the bitch. Her knees bent as the spell forced her down and down, as her clawing fingers reached up and up. Farden looked up at the sky, wondering what she was reaching for.

  It hit him like a brick. One to which the stars succumb.

  It was now or never. His legs be damned. Farden began to crawl towards her, sword in both hands, bellowing her name into gaps in the wind. Behind him, the mages had formed up. Spells began to fly overhead. Fire, lightning, water, and ice, they darted overhead with whip-cracks and hisses, only to dive uselessly into the dirt a few yards from Samara’s feet, forced down by her own spell. This time his daughter did spare a glance, and she caught Farden’s eye as he frantically shimmied through the grass, sword outstretched. She opened her mouth to speak and Farden heard her words in his mind.

  ‘You can’t stop me, murderer!’ she said, the word spat out as an insult.

  ‘I have to!’ he cried. The g
ale stole his words but somehow she managed to hear him. ‘You have no idea what you’re doing!’

  ‘I know exactly what I’m doing!’ she snarled.

  ‘Killing a lot of innocent people, that’s what you’re doing! You’ve been brain-washed, Samara!’ Still the name tasted strange.

  ‘None of these people are innocent. You’ve stolen the world for yourselves, forgotten the true gods. Lived like kings!’ Lies by rote, spilling from her mouth. Practised and embedded. It made Farden’s heart sink. He had hoped…

  Farden managed to get to his knees. ‘The daemons? They enslaved our kind! How can you spout such mindless…?’

  ‘My kind? I’m nothing like you!’ she sneered, as her hair lashed her face. ‘You knew my father, you know what he was. My mother too. I’m nothing like you scum!’

  Farden was speechless. I knew her father… his mind echoed. He just knelt there, confused. Samara was bearing her teeth at him.

  ‘I’ll see you dead before the day is out, murderer!’ she was shouting.

  Farden hit his chest with the flat of the sword and held up his hands. ‘If you want to take revenge on me, then take it. Don’t involve these others!’ More firebolts flew past him, fire skimming his fingers.

  ‘They are as guilty as you are!’

  ‘Guilty of what?!’

  Samara wrinkled her lip. It was a foul expression, made filthier by the pure and simple fact that she was his blood, even if she didn’t know it. ‘Existing,’ she said deep in his mind, somehow managing to echo, as if she had stolen all his thoughts and left a bare hall.

  So be it. A monster, and a mindless one at that. Farden grit his teeth and pushed his knees through the grass. He held his sword out in front. Arrows zipped past him now, but they too were forced into the grass before they could touch her. The wind snapped them and tossed them into the air. Farden quickly glanced behind him and found another formation sprinting down the hill to join the fray. Archers, soldiers, and mages. Farden spied some Written in their ranks. It didn’t take long for their spells to come flying in. The difference was palpable.

  Farden fell to the grass as four giant fireballs flew over his head, singeing his hair. But even they failed to reach her. The ground burst into fountains of charred soil as they buried themselves at her feet. Samara pressed on with her spell.

  Farden shut his eyes and tucked his head under his hands as the mages began to cast everything they had. He cowered and prayed for some smidgeon of accuracy. Fire scorched his hands and neck. Lightning flicked him as it passed him. Arrows whined. In that place, caught in his daughter’s hurricane and in the wake of spells, time seemed to slow. He vaguely remembered this sensation. He watched yet another fire spell pass over him, sliding sedately past his shoulder, a crystalline globule of orange ridges and white crests. It fell to the earth like all the others. The ground was churned into dust as each and every attempt was rebuffed, a crescent of destruction that refused to reach his daughter. Farden soon lost sight of her behind the wall of dirt and flame.

  The wind was reaching its crescendo now. He suddenly felt a lurch as the ground beneath him dropped an inch. The world began to shake. The spells paused for just a moment. Farden could have sworn he heard Modren bellowing over the roar of the wind. Farden buried his face in the grass as the spells began to fly again, faster and harder this time. There was a dull boom as the ground sagged again. The mage caught a brief glimpse of his daughter through the wind-chased chaos. She had dropped to one knee, as if bearing some terrible weight. There was a desperate look of pain and effort on her face. Her body was twisting and contorting in the most unimaginable ways. The ground at her feet was cracking and splintering. One of her feet was slowly sinking into the earth. Stones cracked and crunched. Wind screeched. Still she reached for the sky. Samara’s spell was taking its final breath.

  ‘Samara!’ Farden yelled again over the roar.

  Kadooom!

  The thunderclap threw everyone to the grass. Soldier, archer, mage, onlooker, every single person within a mile of Samara felt the ground fly out from under them. Spells flew high into the air like fireworks as their casters tumbled onto their arses.

  It was then that they all saw them. Three stark pinpricks of light, stuck high in the blue ceiling of sky, teetering in the unreachable rafters. Stars bold enough to face the day’s sun.

  ‘Stars…’ Farden mouthed.

  Only Durnus stayed standing. Legs stuck fast in the grass, arms outstretched to steady himself against the shockwave, he stared with smoky eyes at the whirlwind that was the girl’s spell. Eyes weren’t needed here. He could see every inch of Samara and her power. She glowed like a brand in the night. Her spell was like a pillar of white glass reaching high into the darkness. Durnus followed the pillar up, and saw three white specks at its distant tip. Cold. Calm. Waiting for Samara to drag them down into the kingdom of men. Durnus could almost feel their stares.

  The Arkmage clapped his hands together and a shivering ball of lightning blossomed between them. Durnus let it grow and grow, until he held it above his head. As the men around him pointed and yelled to each other about the lights in the sky, Durnus raised his spell high, straining, and then threw it with all his might.

  By the skin of the spell’s teeth, it made it through her whirling maelstrom, just close enough to knock one of her legs out from under her. Samara faltered, momentarily losing her concentration. If Durnus were closer, he might have seen an expression of utter horror on her face, as if it was the first time she had ever felt the sting of magick. Horror was quickly usurped by hatred, however, and now, knocked to her knees, she pulled all the harder.

  Durnus spat. He turned to a nearby Written and yelled in his face, over the roar. ‘Get the people away from here, now!’

  ‘Right away, your Mage!’ replied the man, sprinting away.

  ‘Are they what I think they are?’ asked a voice from behind him. It was Modren. Durnus nodded. ‘Then may the gods help us.’

  ‘Modren, my good friend, the gods are right here with us, and as helpless as the next man,’ Durnus looked behind him, where two faint shimmers of light told him that the gods were standing high up on the hill, watching the chaos. Modren followed the Arkmage’s gaze. They were two solitary specks, standing still amongst a crowd of panicking, running people. Their chins were high, as were their eyes, glued to the sky.

  ‘Ready the men,’ ordered Durnus.

  Modren narrowed his eyes. ‘For a fight they’ve never had before, it seems.’ And with that, he turned on his heel and began to bark order after order to his men and mages. They moved to his bidding with alacrity, following every word like trained dogs of war. Only Durnus stayed behind. With a grunt, he raised another spell, and hurled it down the hill once again.

  ‘Three?!’ a shrill shout punctured the roar. Samara flinched as another spark spell sprayed dirt in her face. The strain was almost unbearable. One of her shoulders had been wrenched from its socket already. The other was soon to follow.

  ‘Three?’ Lilith yelled again. ‘That’s it?! Where are the others?’

  ‘Too…’ Samara held strong as yet another huge ball of lightning struck the ground around her feet. The earth groaned underneath her. She was almost done. Just a little more. ‘…difficult,’ she managed.

  Something twitched, like a ljot string snapping. Not in her arm, but elsewhere, in the air about her. The spell began to weaken, and Samara dropped her arms to the applause of thunder. She rolled to the broken earth as yet another spell came flying in. She barely deflected it. Lilith darted forward and grabbed Samara by the scruff of her collar, dragging her to the little outcrop of rocks she had been hiding behind. ‘Where are the others?’ she cried.

  ‘It was too hard!’ Samara snapped. The whirlwind still spun around them, masking their little escape.

  Lilith was purple with either rage, or disappointment, or both. Samara was too exhausted to care. ‘I knew it! I knew you should have bloody waited! Come on, we need to leave!’
she yelled.

  Samara shrugged her off and stumbled to her feet. ‘I’m staying!’

  ‘To do what?!’

  The girl looked up into the sky, where the white stars were growing bigger and brighter as each chaotic second ticked by. ‘To watch,’ she said, ‘and to finish Far…’ But she said no more, and instead, promptly toppled over. Her eyes rolled back into her skull. The girl was out cold. The spell had drained her like a drunk with a wineskin.

  ‘Move yourself, you foolish girl! We need to leave!’ Lilith began to haul her away from the chaos and the exploding spells. With the dust and the smoke and the fire, nobody saw them leave. Besides, they were all too busy watching the stars falling.

  In the higher places of the sky, where the blue groped at the cold, black edges of the emptiness, where the air couldn’t reach, where the lungs would shrivel in a moment’s work, the falling stars made no noise. No fire seeped from their flanks. No roar followed them down. Their tails were dust and diamonds. It was almost serene, peaceful, in a strange way, to see three stars falling in arrowhead unison, silent as could be.