Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

  “This book is a work of fiction, but some works of fiction contain perhaps more truth than first intended, and therein lies the magic.”

  Copyright © Ben Galley 2013

  The right of Ben Galley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used, edited, transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), or reproduced in any manner without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews or articles. It may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the Publisher’s permission.

  Permission can be obtained through www.bengalley.com.

  All characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  DS2EB1:

  ISBN: 978-0-9567700-9-7

  eBook Edition – Kindle

  Published by BenGalley.com

  Cover Design by Mikael Westman

  Original Illustration by Ben Galley

  Professional Dreaming by Ben Galley

  Want a physical version instead? Not a problem. Dead Stars Part Two is now also available in paperback from all major bookshops and online stores.

  Just head to www.bengalley.com/BenGalley.com/Books to find out more.

  About the Author

  Ben Galley is a young indie author and purveyor of lies. Harbouring a near-fanatical love of writing and fantasy, Ben has been scribbling tall tales ever since he was first trusted with a pencil. When he’s not busy day-dreaming on park benches or hunting down dragons, he runs the self-publishing advice site Shelf Help, zealously aiding other authors achieve their dream of publishing.

  For more about Ben, Shelf Help, or for more about Emaneska, visit:

  www.bengalley.com

  Simply say hello at:

  hello@bengalley.com

  Or follow on Twitter:

  @bengalley

  The names below are those of the downright glorious group of people who helped edit my book. These are the esteemed Beta Readers of Dead Stars Parts One and Two, and each and every one of them is a star in their own right.

  Thank you very much for all your help. Great work. Neato gang.

  (in no particular order)

  Nancy Clark

  Kevin Richard

  Jason Bennett

  Sarah Clark

  Paul Nelson

  Sam Leeves

  Marj Crockett

  Genevieve Taylor

  Luke James Wardle

  Cathy Villars

  Sheila Billings

  and Helen McKenna

  Dead Stars

  Part Two

  By Ben Galley

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Maps

  Part One – Of Grimsayers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part Two – Of Ghostgates

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part Three – Of Snow and Fire

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogues

  Acknowledgements

  Did you like Dead Stars Part Two?

  Part One

  Of Grimsayers

  Chapter 1

  “It is foolhardy to believe that we humans are the only wielders of good and evil in this world.”

  Words from the scholar Lasti, scribe to the Arkmage Los.

  ‘War.’ The word was a fleck of spit on sun-warmed stone. A hot lump in the throat of its utterer. A dark scowl in the eyes of the nearby. Durnus let its hallway echoes die like a thief sent to the city noose. Alone and unwanted. Unloved.

  ‘Is it?’ asked Tyrfing, between the squeaking of his boots.

  ‘Of course it is!’ Durnus snapped back at him.

  ‘Then what a strange war it is,’ muttered Farden. The three fell silent. Silent as graves once again, silent save for the pacing of Tyrfing. He strode in impatient circles and tight, angry figures-of-eight. His armoured hands were clasped firmly behind his back while his face tried its hardest to imitate thunder. He would occasionally go to the window, press his nose up against it, and scowl at the city and its beyond. Smoke rose in three pillars from the distant hillside. Black, oily smoke, tinged with the sulphurous yellow of a dead daemon and the broken Spire. Word had it that a crowd had gathered to marvel at the creature. Vultures of curiosity, the lot of them. If this was war, then they were the only three men who knew it.

  Durnus, still dirt-clad from the field and the fight, slouched on the wooden bench, sagging with more than just the simple tiredness of battle. His patience was stretched like cheap silk over a brothel bed, and getting thinner by the minute. Keeping his eyes screwed shut, he listened to the frantic sounds from behind the door across the hallway. Sounds of vials clinking, hurried whispering, and an Undermage fretting, yelling, snarling.

  For once, Farden was the only smidgeon of calm the three could lay claim to. He lay a short distance away, sprawled on the floor with his hands firmly clamped to each side of his throbbing head. His feet would occasionally kick out, suddenly eager to stand up and get moving, only to remember the reason why they lingered.

  For the mage, the world was suddenly very simple. Upside-down and shaken to shit, but simple nonetheless. Maybe that was why. He was used to that view.

  It was the first time in decades he had experienced such decisive clarity. The mist of his nevermar withdrawal momentarily lifted, his was an unflinching clarity realised in beautiful simplicity. Farden saw his tasks like stepping stones, cast out before him. He spoke them aloud, whispered in little breaths. Save Elessi. Beat the truth about his vambraces out of Loki. Hunt his daughter down. End her. Simple. Sort of. No doubt there would be other little tasks here and there. No doubt it wouldn’t be easy as four little breaths, but they would come at their leisure. Farden had never been so set on anything in his life. It was almost like a medicine to him. He lay on the floor and let the clarity heal him.

  Tyrfing went to the window again and stared down at the streets. Crowds were gathering outside the Arkathedral doors. Crowds bearing banners and painted signs. Crowds headed by people in robes and home-made uniforms. ‘The vultures are circling again,’ he muttered.

  ‘Speaking of vultures…’ Durnus growled.

  The sounds of vehement, striding shoes were quickly approaching. Ten, maybe a dozen of them. Farden begrudgingly got to his feet and stood with the others. They were met with the sight of Malvus and ten of his finest council sycophants rounding the corner, marching towards them as if they were playing soldiers. Malvus had his fists clenched and firmly clamped to his side. His clothes were even grander and smarter than usual, regal, with a dab of something military about them. Shrewdly chosen. His face was the perfect picture o
f political indignity, a lovely shade of russet purple. ‘There you are! What in the name of the golden scales is going on?!’

  Durnus took slow steps to meet him. His patience was now wearing dangerously thin, frayed and parting ways. His gentle pace couldn’t have been more at odds with the storm that burned inside him. Malvus, of course, hurtled on, skidding to a stop in front of Durnus, indignant spittle flying from his lips.

  ‘We demand an explanation for this chaos! There are riots springing up all over Krauslung, riots of fear and panic. People are petrified that those things will return at any time! Every eye is on the sky. It is pandemonium out there, and all you’re doing is sitting here? What sort of game are you playing here, Durnus? Tyrfing?! You have my word, mages, that you will not spend another day on those thrones of…’

  ‘Shut up, Malvus!’ Durnus bellowed, inches from Barkhart’s face. Malvus shuffled backwards, plainly taken aback. Durnus wished he could see the man’s face. ‘You dare to call this a game? Thanks to our efforts, and those of our brave army, this city has been spared a foul fate. Spared from enemies so dire they make you look like an irritating wasp. And where were you, Malvus? Busy counting your coinpurses no doubt, or busy scheming with the rest of your Copse? Yes, we know of your Marble brethren. How dare you accuse us of toying with this city’s fate, when not two hours ago we were fighting hard with our bare hands and spells to preserve it.’

  Malvus had recovered some of his confidence. He looked to his supporters. They nodded eagerly, heads bobbing, urging him on. ‘My fellow Councils,’ he began, turning back, ‘tell me that most of the army was deployed this very morning, before those things arrived. One can only assume that you must have known about them, hmm? Yet again you try to keep us in the dark, and we have to pay the price for your secrets! Krauslung and I demand an explanation!’

  ‘Krauslung will get its explanation, Malvus, but not before we have seen to our fallen, our Elessi. You can wait, like the rest,’ Durnus hissed.

  Malvus looked confused, and even more indignant, if that were possible. ‘Elessi? The woman married off to your lap dog? Ah, so that’s what you’re doing here. You would choose to fret over a fat chambermaid instead of tending to the angry voices of your city. Typical!’

  Further down the hallway, a door quietly clicked shut. There was a sharp intake of breath from the gang of councillors. Durnus shook his head, and backed away, a smile twisting his grey lips. ‘Poor choice of words, for once,’ he sighed.

  Modren was a shade of red so dark it bordered on brown, as if every pint of blood he held in him had suddenly rushed to his cheeks. His knuckles, now shed of their polished steel, popped and clicked as he clenched them. The Undermage could have turned pebbles to sand in those fists. There was a cold sweat on his brow. His eyes were as red as his face, and were busy boring a hole into Malvus. He began to walk towards him, slowly at first, burning with murderous intent. He probably would have satisfied that intent, too, had it not been for Farden.

  Just as Malvus was turning ashen with well-deserved fear, Farden took a step forward and swung a fist. It caught him on the chin, a lucky shot for a tired mage, and the Council’s eyes rolled up into his head. He sagged like a melting candle, right into the arms of his cronies. They began to shout and yell for the guards, cawing like skewered gulls.

  ‘Outrage!’ they yelled.

  ‘Council Malvus has been attacked!’

  ‘Guards! A Written has gone mad!’

  ‘Assault!’

  It may not have been Farden’s wisest decision, but it had done its job. Modren stopped dead in his tracks, fists poised in mid-air, crackling with flame, now utterly purposeless. He could only bare his teeth at the unconscious Malvus and the yelling councillors, shaking with rage.

  Farden bent down. Malvus was already coming around. It hadn’t been a hard punch after all. He blinked like a startled owl, a little blood gathering at the corner of his mouth. He recoiled when he found Farden’s face so close to his own. ‘Think I just saved your life, Barkhart. So, if I were you, I would leave before my good friend here decides to try again.’

  For the first time in a very long time, Malvus was speechless. As were his men. They may have been a bold bunch when it came to politics, but when faced with three angry Written, a furious Durnus, and a slim hallway bereft of witnesses, they quailed.

  With a nod from Malvus, he was hauled upright. He made a show of brushing imaginary dust from his clothes and cleared his throat again, trying to recover some dignity. He would have had better luck trying to squeeze it from the marble.

  ‘If I see any of you again before the sun sets, I’ll show you what a mad Written looks like. In fine bloody detail too!’ Modren shouted after them as they swiftly retreated.

  ‘They’re gone,’ said Tyrfing.

  ‘Probably for the best,’ grunted Modren. He nodded to Farden.

  Farden returned the gesture. Behind him, Tyrfing scuffed his boot along the floor. ‘It does take an age to get blood out of this marble.’

  ‘How is she?’ Farden asked the burning question.

  Modren swallowed something hard. ‘They… they don’t know,’ he said quietly. ‘She’s barely breathing. She’s ice cold to the touch, as if she were already two days dead, but somehow she’s still alive. They tell me that much, at least.’

  The others bowed their heads.

  ‘Can they do something about the poison?’ Farden asked. ‘Is there an antidote, or something?’

  ‘The healers have never even seen a daemon, never mind its poison. They’re stumped. Utterly clueless.’ Fists clenched like punctuation to his words. The blood had fallen from his face. Underneath the dirt and sweat that clung to him, Modren was now white-pale, almost grey.

  ‘Can we see her?’ Durnus asked, and Modren nodded, waving a hand towards the door.

  In silent single file, the others went to the door, gently turned the knob, and went in. The smell of the room, a square and simple affair with a single bed, was one of bitter chemicals and vinegar, of the clinging, dusty odour of cotton and blankets. That iron tang of blood, the salt of sweat. The scent of frustration. Elessi lay on the narrow, iron-barred bed, surrounded by healers and their servants. She was wrapped in blankets, almost as if she were already being prepared for the pyre.

  Durnus and Farden parted the crowd of healers and knelt down by her bedside. Modren was right; she was as cold as winter, and grey as it too. There was not a pinch of blood in her cheeks, not a single flutter in her eyelids. To the casual eye, she looked dead, but somehow she was alive. Squinting, leaning close, they could see that her chest, still wrapped in the golden bodice of her wedding dress, rose and fell in tiny amounts, powering whatever shallow breaths she clung to. The ugly purple wound on her neck and collarbone bled slightly, another sign that her heart still pumped. Durnus laid a hand on her ribs and tried to feel it beating. It took all his concentration to sense its feeble fluttering.

  Modren had entered the room. He stood behind them all. Eyes wide and fixed on his wife.

  ‘She lives,’ said Durnus.

  ‘Though we don’t know how,’ sighed one of the healers, a middle-aged man as tall and as thin as a willow. There was a spot of blood on his cheek, half-dried and cracking.

  ‘Can’t you give her something? It’s what you do isn’t it? Heal people?’ Farden eyed him.

  The healer stared right back. ‘Not a single potion or spell that we know of has worked on her, mage. This poor woman is at death’s door and we have no idea how to bring her round.’ He sighed. ‘It’s hopeless, sirs.’

  Farden made a move for the man, hands ready to throttle a solution out of him. ‘I’ll give you hopeless,’ he hissed, but Tyrfing grabbed his nephew by the collar and dragged him back to sense.

  ‘I tried that,’ muttered Modren, gesturing to the healer’s colleague, a shorter, younger man standing nearby. He nervously twiddled with a vinegar-soaked bandage. The beginnings of a glorious black eye blossomed above his cheek. ‘They’ve
done their best, Farden.’ The pain in Modren’s voice was palpable.

  In silence, he and the others left the healers to watch over Elessi. When the door was closed, Modren went to the window, while Farden and the others stood in a circle. It was a while before anyone else spoke.

  ‘So what’s the plan?’ This from Farden.

  Tyrfing shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as ours, nephew.’

  Farden crossed his arms. ‘But there’s always a plan.’

  ‘And perhaps that is why we are in a dire situation, yet again. What is the old saying? The best laid plans…?’ Durnus trailed off.

  Tyrfing finished for him. ‘We’ve never faced foes like this before, nor on so many fronts. Daemons, daughters, politics, they’re all clamouring at the door.’

  ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing. The very best of the Arka, lost and clueless?’ Farden sounded as though he were about to laugh.

  ‘What would you have us do, Farden?’ Modren spoke into the smudged glass of the window, as if he were speaking to the city, not the mage. He eyed the black smoke in the north. ‘Krauslung’s rising up against us. Malvus has called for the Arkmages to step down. The daemons have vanished to gods know where. Your daughter is still free, ready to attack again at any moment, and Elessi, my new wife, is inches from death.’ It was hard for Modren to hide the hopelessness in his voice, but it was a hopeless moment, and the others let him have it. It was painful to hear a man of his strength admit such truths, and all the more painful that they were truths, not lies. He turned around to face Farden. It looked as though a tear was hovering on his cheek. Perhaps it was the light catching a fleck of broken glass. Nobody dared look too closely. Modren shook his head. ‘What possible solution have you got for all of that, hmm? Because fuck me, I’d like to hear it.’

  Farden crossed his arms and stared right past Modren, at the mountains. ‘Me,’ he replied. There was a sliver of defiant confidence in that response that jolted the others like a spark. This scrawny Farden suddenly looked like another Farden altogether, one they’d lost a long time ago.