Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

  The dream brought the daemons closer. Hundreds of them stood around him, but they spared him not a glance. They were too preoccupied with a figure standing behind Farden, a figure clad in glistening gold and red. It fit him badly, for the figure was small, boyish, and underneath the visor, Farden could glimpse a pair of small, grey-green eyes. His own eyes, so young and innocent, still untouched by the darkness of his history.

  Farden cried out as the daemons reached for the boy. They barged him aside, tossing him back and forth as they rushed in, howling. The dream had taken his voice hostage, and his shouts were hoarse grunts that nobody and nothing heard.

  Farden scrabbled forward through the chaos of black limbs and fiery eyes, clawing at anything and everything he could, but his fingers grasped nothing but smoke. When it cleared, the boy was gone. All that remained was a small girl with jet-black hair, standing in the snow. Samara. Her cheeks were rosy in the cold, and her hands were steaming hot. Her boots were half-buried in the snow. Farden tried to grab her, but she shook her head. ‘Come and get me,’ she said, and the world turned black.

  Lerel watched the mage thrash around with a mixed expression of intrigue and fear. Farden reached out for the ceiling once more in the way that dreaming people do: feebly, half-realised, as though they were swimming in a vat of treacle. She winced as Farden’s head reared up and then came back to the deck with a thud. It seemed to do the trick. Whatever dream he was having was stifled, and he began to snore again. Lerel frowned.

  Rolling over onto her back, she put her hands behind her neck and stared at the ceiling, counting the whorls in the stout wood as she felt the ship move underneath her. It took her three tries to get to twenty. Nothing is more distracting than a big rat scampering up and down the foot of the bed. It made her shiver. Farden’s rat was an ugly thing. She grimaced at an old memory of eating a rat just like it, the bones squeaking, the hair, stuck on her pink cat tongue… ‘Ugh,’ Lerel said aloud, shivering again.

  Farden cracked an eyelid and found a wooden ceiling staring back at him. No dark shapes. No fell faces. No smoke. No girls standing in snow. No young boy…

  Farden flinched and rolled onto his shoulder. The sudden grip of panic faded as soon as he saw Lerel staring back at him calmly, head propped up on one hand. ‘There you are,’ Farden muttered hoarsely, his throat still asleep. It felt as though he had spent the night shouting.

  ‘You snore like a quillhog.’

  ‘Rubbish. I don’t snore. Ask Whiskers.’

  Lerel smirked. ‘Whiskers can’t talk.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ Farden said, rolling onto his front. His body ached in a hundred places, and another hundred that he had forgotten existed. It reminded him of how weak his body still was. Farden pushed himself up onto his knees, and pulled a face. ‘Why do I have a headache?’ he asked, feeling the back of his head.

  ‘You hit your head. You were dreaming, I think.’

  ‘I was…’ Farden’s expression went vacant, recalling flashes and faces. He sat back on his heels and sighed. He looked up at Lerel lying in his bed and rubbed his grizzled chin. ‘So to what do I owe the pleasure of having you in my bed?’

  Lerel shrugged. She reached up to flick her dark hair out of her face, betraying her tattoos. ‘My bed isn’t as comfy as your bed. You weren’t using it at the time.’

  ‘Opportunist.’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘So you weren’t here for…’ Farden bit his lip. As Lerel raised an eyebrow, he heard his words crashing and burning. Too late. ‘Er… I mean…’

  Lerel sat up. The look on her face was one inch from indignant. ‘You must have hit your head hard indeed.’ She held her expression for a moment longer, until Farden was about to start sweating, before smirking. ‘Well, you’ll never know.’

  Farden rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and chuckled grimly.

  ‘Breakfast?’ she asked.

  ‘I think so. Before I say anything else.’

  The wind on deck howled like a wolf, a wolf whose ears were in the process of being torn off. It played tunes on the rigging, whining and groaning in an arrhythmic ballad of foul weather. The clouds were spitting just enough to be irritating, and just enough to make the deck slippery.

  Nuka was at the wheel, stoic as ever in his waxed coats and trousers. Heimdall stood beside him, looking for all the world like a statue. Loki was by the railing, simply looking. The sea roared by under his sullen and bored gaze.

  The Waveblade was stuck, sandwiched between two worlds of grey. The clouds hung over them like a granite atrium, stormy and swirling, while the sea below bucked and roiled and frothed, its waters the colour of iron. The air was cold and winter-touched, as if they were sailing north to another season instead of another land. In the far west, the black knuckles of Nelska were slowly but surely fading into the rainy haze. There wasn’t a peek of a dragon to be seen. Not yet.

  Eyrum was hopeful though. He stood patiently at the bow with Ilios. The gryphon looked disgruntled by the weather. His wings were arched like umbrellas and he flinched every time the ‘Blade dug into a wave and sent up a fountain of spray. His yellow eyes were narrow and unhappy, but still he seemed unwilling to either leave his makeshift nest or the Siren’s side.

  ‘Fine day for a sail,’ announced Farden as he led Lerel under one of Ilios’ wings.

  Eyrum turned around and looked at his new visitor. The mage had his hood up to hide his face from the rain. Strands of wayward black hair had escaped and were blowing about in the wind. His face was pale, stubble hiding more than a few scars, but he looked just as he remembered him from the very first time they had met, in a dining room deep in Hjaussfen. How he had hated him then, for simply being Arka. How wrong he had been.

  ‘A summer’s day in Nelska,’ remarked the Siren, turning back to the sea. Farden went to stand by his side and both men braced themselves as the Waveblade dove headlong into a wave.

  ‘What rubbish,’ Farden chuckled. ‘Any sign of them?’

  Eyrum scanned the skies again with his one eye. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘They’ll be here soon,’ Farden muttered reassuringly. Eyrum barely heard him over the roar of the weather.

  ‘I know,’ Eyrum replied.

  Farden turned around and faced the gryphon. He wasn’t surprised to find Ilios staring straight back at him, eyes narrowed, knowing. ‘You know exactly what I’m going to say, don’t you?’

  Ilios warbled something grumpy.

  Farden shook his head. ‘What did he say?’ he asked Eyrum.

  Eyrum didn’t look away from the sea. ‘I haven’t a clue, mage. I don’t speak gryphon.’

  ‘He said he was only trying to help,’ said a voice, Loki’s, from nearby. He had crept down from the aftcastle after seeing them emerge from below. Eyrum immediately bowed.

  Farden did no such thing. He eyed the god up and down. He was wearing his usual brown coat, unbuttoned as usual. The weather obviously wasn’t bothering him. After all, why should it? What was cold to a ghost, a shadow? Loki flashed a warm smile and waved to Lerel, huddled as she was under the gryphon’s wing. Lerel smiled politely but didn’t move.

  ‘You speak gryphon, do you?’ Farden challenged him.

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Naturally,’ echoed Farden. ‘Well, in that case you can tell him that he isn’t helping. If he’s concerned with my well-being, then he should know the value of a good night’s uninterrupted rest. I’ve got enough to worry about without his dreams stuck in my head.’

  Ilios clacked his beak and squawked.

  ‘I understood that,’ Eyrum grunted, hiding a chuckle.

  Farden rolled his eyes. ‘How are they supposed to help, anyway? Tyrfing told me that you can’t see the future any more now that the magick is increasing, so what scraps of it are you trying to show me? What is it supposed to mean? Drowning and being naked in the snow. Rivers full of ghosts. Fingernail ships with screeching vultures for figureheads. What are you possibly trying to show me,
Ilios?’

  Loki was looking at Farden with a strange glint in his eye. Eyrum had also turned around, wondering what in Emaneska Farden was babbling on about. Ilios leant forward and whistled a low little tune. Loki shuffled forward. ‘He says he made you dream about the snow, and Samara, and that he was only trying to help. But he knows nothing about making you dream about vultures or rivers full of ghosts. That was nothing to do with him.’

  Farden crossed his arms. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said, staring flatly at the gryphon.

  The gryphon clacked his beak again. He looked insulted. ‘You should,’ Loki said with a smart look.

  ‘There was a shallow river, and a ship full of… It came down the river and I was dragged away…’ Farden mumbled to himself. Ilios shook his beak.

  Loki rubbed his clean-shaven chin. The glint in his eye refused to leave. ‘You didn’t happen to have this dream of yours around the time that I found you in Albion, did you?’ he asked.

  ‘Shut it. I know what you’re getting at,’ Farden hissed. He went to stand eye to eye with the gryphon. ‘You’re sure?’

  Ilios nodded and let out a single wavering note. ‘Yes,’ Loki affirmed.

  ‘Well,’ Farden said, taking a shuddering breath. So it was true. He had gone to Hel. The words sounded preposterous in his head, but he couldn’t deny them. He felt a little sick. He hadn’t even had breakfast yet and revelations were already falling from the sky. ‘At least I know I’m right. And what’s coming, I suppose.’ Small mercies.

  ‘What have I missed here?’ chimed Lerel.

  Farden pushed his nausea back to where it had sprung from. ‘Nothing. Just a bit of clarification before breakfast. Meanwhile, where’s my uncle?’

  Eyrum grumbled. ‘In a foul mood. He seems to be ill, and he can’t get hold of Durnus using that scroll of his,’ he advised. ‘I know a few wizards aboard who would like to see that.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll get their chance, if my uncle hasn’t burnt it to a crisp already. He below?’

  ‘In the galley,’ Eyrum said, turning back to the sea.

  ‘Lerel? Shall we eat?’

  ‘Let’s.’

  Loki idly gazed at the sky. ‘I’m glad I could be of assistance,’ he muttered sarcastically.

  Farden curled his lip. ‘Good. Now you can go back to doing whatever it is you do best. Oh, remind me, what is that exactly?’

  Loki smiled the coldest smile Farden had ever seen. It actually made a shiver run down the mage’s spine. The god stuffed his hands into his coat pockets and left.

  Before they went below, Farden patted Eyrum on his broad back, and then went to place a hand on Ilios’ beak. The gryphon was a little confused but he understood the gesture. ‘Thank you, I think,’ Farden whispered. Ilios whistled and shook his wings as another wave of spray descended on them.

  Farden grimaced as he tasted salt on his tongue. The rain was getting heavier. Lerel wiped spray from her face. ‘That’s our cue,’ she said to him, and with that they hurried below.

  At the bow, Eyrum turned to Ilios. He was shaking his head. ‘Ah, Farden,’ he said, spitting sea-water to the side. ‘Speaking so to a god. How does he get away with it?’

  If a gryphon can shrug, Ilios did.

  Tyrfing was pacing up and down the corridor outside the galley, pausing only to sip his steaming mug and cough into his napkin. He sounded like a bear with a salmon bone stuck in its gullet. Farden heard the sound from three corridors away, and it made him wince to hear how wet and ragged it sounded.

  ‘Uncle,’ Farden called as they rounded the corner to find him wearing a groove in the deck.

  ‘Farden,’ said Tyrfing. He wiped his mouth and cleared his throat with a grimace. ‘Lerel. Morning.’

  ‘Morning,’ Farden replied, studying his uncle. Without his armour he seemed a different person. He looked decidedly grey in the half-lit gloom of the narrow corridor, deep in the ship. Decidedly thinner too, though it could have been the light. His eyes had the weary, red-rimmed look of a man who had been up all night coughing. Surprising, that. ‘You sick?’

  Tyrfing ignored the stupidity of the question and shook his head staunchly. ‘Something I ate,’ he answered. It was a poor excuse. They all knew he had an iron stomach. Once, during his first years in the desert, he had eaten the leather sole from a shoe and lived to tell the tale.

  Lerel hummed. ‘Doesn’t sound like you.’

  Tyrfing waved them into the galley as another round of coughing took him. It was undoubtedly his chest causing him grief. ‘Getting old,’ he managed to grunt.

  The galley smelled like roasting meat and fresh bread. It was a smell that could have made the tongue dance, had it not been drowning in its own juices. Farden’s stomach rumbled appreciatively as the smells wafted up his cold nostrils.

  The ship’s main cook was as all cooks should be, a jolly man of jolly proportions. Where Tinbits was simply plain and of average build, this man looked like the very dough he was kneading. His head was beaded with sweat from the ovens and his work, and his flat grey hat sat somewhat askew, and covered in flour. It was comforting to see a man who quite obviously enjoyed the food he cooked. It spoke a lot for the food.

  ‘Morning,’ Farden bowed. Lerel followed suit.

  ‘Morning!’ the cook practically bellowed. ‘You’re late, for a sailor. And you, ma’am, should know better.’

  Lerel raised her hands in mock exasperation. ‘I blame him.’

  Farden shrugged. ‘I’ve an excuse. I’m a mage.’

  ‘Late for a mage too,’ chuckled the cook. He was still bludgeoning the dough with his rosy hands. ‘Your kind was up an hour ago. For training amidships. Soldiers too.’

  ‘I see,’ Farden hummed. ‘So is it too late to break our fast, or is it too early for lunch?’

  The cook turned around clapped his hands in a cloud of flour. ‘Both, but I’ve got something for you two all the same. I call it lunchfast.’

  ‘Lunchfast?’

  ‘Mid-mornin’ snack.’

  ‘Doesn’t really roll off the tongue…’ Tyrfing whispered from the doorway.

  Lerel piped up. ‘What about brunch?’

  The cook looked mildly peeved that he hadn’t thought of that. He frowned. ‘Don’t think that’ll catch on, ma’am.’

  ‘Lunchfast it is then,’ Farden said. He didn’t care about its name, he just wanted to eat it. ‘What is it?’

  The cook rubbed his hands together and went to a nearby oven. With a flourish of a cloth, he whisked two buns from its hot shelves. He had sliced them in two before Lerel or Farden could blink. Next he reached into a pan and brought out several slices of a pinkish meat, shimmering with grease. He slapped them into the buns, flicked two dollops of a greyish sauce that Farden’s nose could only guess was mustard on top, and then squeezed them tight. ‘Here,’ he said, handing them one each.

  Farden sniffed his breakfast. He shrugged off his hood to shed a bit more light on it. Whatever it was, it smelled glorious. Salty, meaty, and greasy, all at the same time. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A certain slice o’ pig. Bacon, it’s called. Came from the ship’s pig yesterday.’

  Farden mumbled his thanks around an ambitious mouthful. It tasted as glorious as it smelled, perhaps even better.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said the cook, tipping his cap and going back to his dough.

  Farden and Lerel, enraptured by their sandwiches, wandered back out into the corridor. Tyrfing seemed to have recovered from his coughing, though his skin was still pale and clammy, still as gaunt.

  ‘No healing spell to sort it out?’

  ‘I usually would,’ Tyrfing lied, ‘but there’s a lot of magick on this ship at the moment. Mages are training.’ He gestured down the corridor and they began to walk. Lerel in front, face-deep in sandwich, the two mages at the back.

  ‘So I heard,’ Farden mumbled.

  Tyrfing watched his nephew eat. There was something different about him, something new. ‘You look a little
better today,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t really feel it,’ Farden grunted.

  Tyrfing squinted as he led them down a level and towards the bow. ‘No, there’s something quite relaxed about you. Last night’s revelations, I assume?’

  Farden tipped his head from side to side in a way that said yes and no. ‘And this morning’s,’ he admitted. ‘Ilios just unintentionally took a big weight off my mind, I think.’

  ‘He does that.’

  Farden finished his sandwich and began to lick his fingers clean of grease. Whatever bacon and lunchfast were, he silently swore to make a habit of them both. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, uncle, but I can’t say the same of you. You look like shit.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Lerel chimed in.

  Tyrfing nodded. ‘I feel it. I spent most of the night trying to contact Durnus via the Inkweld, to no avail. He was silent, and I can’t help but wonder if something has happened.’

  ‘He’s a pale king, for gods’ sake, uncle. He’ll be fine. What exactly are you worried about? Samara is heading north. Those two daemons wouldn’t attack by themselves. Who else is there?’

  ‘There are other snakes in the grass besides your daughter and her daemons.’

  ‘What, that Malvus chap? The one Modren almost ripped in two? Surely he’s all talk.’

  ‘That’s all he needs. He uses his tongue like an assassin uses a dagger. You didn’t see a lot of Krauslung, Farden; that city is rotten to the core and ready to buckle. All it needs is a careful push. The people have come to believe they don’t need things like councils and Arkmages any more. They’re moving onto the next best thing, but they don’t know what it is. Malvus is in a unique position to give them it. He and the rest of the Marble Copse.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? Magick purists, or so it’s said. There’s been no proof but plenty of talk recently. Apparently they started decades ago under Arkmages Mettelsson and Barnabus. Durnus and I suspect that Malvus has taken the Copse from an inner circle of grumblers within the council to a fully fledged faction that wants to see its beliefs manifested in a Krauslung of their own. For all their talk and pomp, their greed makes them dangerous. And so do their ideas. They’d see the Arkmagehood fall if they could, magick and knowledge restricted to the point of secrecy, a ban on the magick markets, taxes lining their pockets, and worse. They’re purists and extremists. They want to return the Arka to some former glory it never had. Idiots.’