Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

  epilogues

  A pair of deep brown eyes followed the constellations of weary footprints south and into the distance. Gone. Disappeared. Alone. All these words pleased Loki.

  He wove his way between the unburied bodies. The daemons, fallen in their droves, the Lost Clan dragons, crumpled and broken like strange, collapsed tents, and the ones that didn’t resemble much at all. He tiptoed around each of them, staring at their freezing remains, looking for nothing in particular.

  Upon the hill, he found a crater on a ledge of black rock. His boots split the rock open with every step, crunched glass, trod ash. He bent down to taste the char. Magick, blood, and sweat too. Samara had been here. His finger prodded the dirt like a spear. They had buried her at least. He had expected that much.

  In amongst the rocks he found it, dropped in a hurry and left forgotten. Lilith’s book. The one the Shrieks had told him about. With a smile, Loki found a seat under a fire-scorched ledge and rested the heavy tome on his lap. Rubbing his hands, he opened it with a flourish and examined its contents.

  Skin. Pages of skin was what it was. They were oiled and tanned, but roughly done. A few hairs remained here and there. A crusting of blood in some places. What a grotesque little trophy he had found for himself. Loki rubbed the pages between his fingers and felt his teeth chatter. There was magick in those pages, he could feel it. Loki ran his fingers along the lines of strange script, finely tattooed… A smile curved around Loki’s face. He knew exactly what these pages were. It had all become clear. What a grotesque little trophy indeed. A grotesquely powerful trophy.

  Loki hoisted the book under his arm and strolled back down the hill. He cast around for some of the bigger, more frantic footprints, leading off like thorns into the wilderness. These were the ones he needed. Loki looked up, eyeing the dark horizon. A solitary cloud, so lonely in the frozen skies of the north, passed momentarily over the weak sun. A long shadow threw itself on the ice. When it had withdrawn itself, the god was gone.

  ‘Close that door you oaf! We’ll freeze down to our bones!’ Seria scolded from the table, her hands firmly on her stew-spattered apron.

  ‘Calm yourself woman, there’s a bird out ‘ere, trying to get in. Flapping like a flag in a storm he is!’ Traffyd hollered over his shoulder. Sketched in the bright light spilling through the open door, Seria could see her husband’s shadow flailing about madly, trying to catch something deranged and fluttering with a blanket.

  ‘Well don’t let ‘im in! He’ll be up in the thatch for hours!’

  There was a cry and a thud and moments later, Traffyd came hobbling through the doorway, wrestling a quivering bundle of blanket onto the tabletop.

  ‘There,’ he whispered to it soothingly, whilst Seria fussed and bothered around him. ‘Easy now, you mad bird.’ The hawk was soon calmed. Traffyd had a way with animals.

  ‘He’s got a bag on his leg,’ Seria jabbed with a spoon. ‘See if you can get it off.’

  Traffyd was slowly stroking the hawk’s feathers now, holding the blanket over its eyes. ‘You get it. I’ll keep ‘im calm.’

  Seria puffed out her pink cheeks. ‘I’m ain’t touchin’ that rabid thing!’

  ‘He’s a fine bird, Seria, not some mangy crow.’

  Seria huffed but curiosity soon got the better of her. Her nimble fingers quickly saw to the twine around the bag’s neck, and while Traffyd gently placed the hawk in a warm part of the kitchen, Seria gently shook the bag out on the table.

  The note came out first. A thin square of paper. Traffyd pinched it between his soil-darkened fingers and peered at its scribbled words. He read them aloud, slow and steady, in a quiet voice not used to letters.

  To traffyd and Seria. May this bring you the same luck it has brought me. It saw me through death and back. Twice.

  Thank you deeply.

  Farden

  Another shake of the bag, and a pendant tumbled out onto the smooth wood. Seria held it up to the firelight, letting it glitter.

  It was a thin sliver of a dragon scale, sandy-orange in colour and sparkling as though it had been dipped in gold dust, dangling from a thin metal chain. Its colours danced in the glow of the fire. Traffyd rubbed it. It felt like rough metal.

  ‘Well I never,’ was all he could say. Then he began to laugh, slowly and quietly at first, but then louder and heartier, until he was braying to the rafters. Seria looked on, a severe frown on her blushing face.

  ‘What are you laughing at, you old fool?’ she chided.

  ‘He’s alive, Seria, alive and well! Don’t you see? Jötun be damned. That mage has more lives than a cat!’

  Seria tried. She tried very hard indeed, but in the end, it was futile to resist. As she clutched the dragonscale pendant to her chest, she began to laugh, slowly and quietly at first.

  Dawn was a bitter sight, bringing a light drizzle and bad news. It came by hawk, exhausted, bedraggled, and half-dead by any rights.

  The bird flopped onto the Nest and crumpled to a heap next to Malvus’ right boot. It’s glazed eyes, speckled with rain, stared up at the bony fingers of the marble trees above. Malvus nudged the poor hawk onto its side, and then bent down to rip the scrap of grimy parchment from its spindly ochre leg. Malvus wrinkled his lip as he unravelled the wet mess with the tips of his manicured fingernails. It was barely even a scrap, to tell the truth. Torn from a book, no doubt, charred on one side, ripped on the other, with its words scratched and spattered. Urgent. Angry.

  Malvus’ lips twitched as he read silently to himself. There wasn’t much to read. An infuriating handful of lines, only three, but they told him all he needed to know in aching brevity. Saker had failed. Orion was dead.

  ‘Problems?’ asked a voice. A confident voice, considering the weight of Toskig’s armoured hand resting on the stranger’s shoulder, considering the guards hovering in the dripping shadows of the marble trees with their knives drawn and ready, waiting for a word.

  Malvus pinched the parchment between two fingers and ripped it down the middle. He contemptuously tossed its halves over the edge of the Nest and watched them drift like dead feathers into the dark of the city below. ‘None that concern you,’ he replied.

  ‘You don’t seem too happy, milord,’ came the reply. Still confident. The stranger’s assuredness grated against Malvus.

  ‘All has gone to plan,’ Malvus lied. Why hadn’t that blasted seer told him about the failure of the daemons? Had she lied? Or had she not known? Malvus clenched his fist. The daemons were but one chapter in his story. All will be settled, he told himself. Pasting a smile onto his face, he turned around to confront his visitor.

  The stranger was a tall, thin gentleman, almost treelike with his spindly arms and skinny legs, like a winter-bitten willow escaped from a riverbank. His face was gaunt, his eyes a dark shade of brown, and his nose wide and crooked, a sign that it had been broken some time in the past. It hadn’t been set well. His hair was shaved within a fraction of its life. Already the years were beginning to pull its dwindling borders back. Albion-stock, clearly. Malvus sneered. Peasants.

  ‘So then,’ Malvus began, superciliously folding his arms across his armoured chest. ‘Jeasin says she knows you.’

  The stranger smiled. ‘We’ve crossed paths before.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She was some assistance to us, actually, in the endeavour I mentioned.’

  ‘And who is us, exactly?’

  ‘Duke Kiltyrin, of course, before he lost his mind.’

  ‘I see.’ That mad fool.

  The two men stared for a moment, through the drizzle and the shadow, each trying to gauge the other. Malvus looked to the north while he rubbed his chin. ‘You lie to me, and I’ll have you drowned in the harbour, after I have the guards remove your tongue that is. Do you understand?’ he asked, eyes like flint.

  The stranger’s head bobbed up and down. ‘Clear as day, milord.’

  ‘Now,’ Malvus leant against the marble, ‘you will tell me all about the Nin
e you spoke of.’

  Loffrey smiled once more.

  ‘Are you lost, sister?’ Hel grumbled, watching the tall, faded figure emerge from the gloomy tunnel and make for the gangplank. Her dress and bare feet rustled softly against the pebbles.

  Evernia waited until she was aboard before she answered. She shimmered, barely visible in the bright lights of Naglfar’s lanterns. A faint, fitful snoring came from the bow of the ship. Hel was sprawled against a bulwark, sullen and dejected.

  ‘Not in the slightest, my sister,’ Evernia replied. Her voice sounded faraway and lost. Hel shrugged. She pointed a black fingernail at the silk sack hanging from the goddess’ left hand.

  ‘What’s in the bag?’ she asked.

  Evernia wasted no time with preamble or conversational foreplay. She knew her sister well, and she could see the mood she was in. Black as her eyes. With a flourish, she undid the cords of the sack and let it fall to the deck.

  Hel sat up. ‘Your scales.’

  Evernia held up her golden scales, perfectly balanced as always. ‘Indeed. Our new weapon.’

  ‘I thought Farden was your new weapon.’

  Evernia tilted her head. ‘A weapon for a different sort of enemy.’

  ‘Loki.’

  ‘And his plans, whatever they may be. Heimdall watches him. He is furtive.’

  ‘And you never saw this coming.’

  Evernia bowed her head, truly upset. ‘Never.’

  ‘The scales then, sister. Divulge your intentions.’

  ‘Hel has now been rendered a home for souls. No longer a path, but a warehouse if you will. This could be very dangerous in the wrong hands.’

  ‘Or claws. I have fended some off already.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Your plan?’

  Evernia crossed her arms. ‘We provide another home. One out of the daemon’s reach. We cannot take them all, but we take the ones we can. Haven and Hel. One above, and one underneath.’

  ‘And we decide, how?’

  ‘By weighing the souls,’ Evernia said, laying her scales gently on the floor. ‘Fear not sister, the balance is heavily tipped in our favour. These are my scales, after all.’

  ‘So, the boatman has become the merchant.’

  Evernia nodded. ‘If you will.’

  Hel took a deep breath, and got to her feet. She took a moment to dust herself off. ‘The battle for the soul has begun then.’

  ‘Whether we like it or not, sister. Whether we like it or not.’

  Six days, it took them. Six days to find the Waveblade again.

  Roiks nearly hugged the mast when he came aboard. He would have done, probably, had it not been for the broken arm he now wielded. Nuka hugged him instead. Him and every other of his sailors that had returned to him. There were a sorry few, that was the truth. At times like this, joy and grief are the best of friends.

  ‘Home,’ Farden said, when the whales had finally broken them free of the ice. The whoosh of dragon wings ruffled his hair. He blew it out of his face with a snort. ‘What a strange word that is.’

  ‘More so than ever, now that we can’t go back to Krauslung,’ Elessi sighed. She hadn’t left Modren’s side since he had found her sprinting across the snow towards their weary column, bare feet almost shredded from the ice. The Undermage had practically carried her all the way back to the ship.

  ‘Where to then?’ Lerel asked, leaning heavily on her own mage, Farden. Like Roiks, she hadn’t survived the battle unscathed. She had broken a leg, and was insistent that Farden was the best crutch around. He certainly was the shiniest. He had yet to remove any of his armour besides his helmet. He glittered in the sunset, almost dragon-like himself.

  They all took a moment to think.

  ‘South? To Paraia?’ suggested Durnus, leaning wearily against the railing of the ship. Nearby, Ilios looked up with an eager trill.

  ‘Perhaps, at first,’ Farden shrugged.

  ‘Albion?’ Elessi ventured. Everybody, even Modren, pulled a face, Farden especially.

  ‘The sea is my home, and we have the whole of it to ourselves, ladies and gentlemen,’ boomed Nuka, as he sauntered towards them along the deck. ‘Let me show you the world one port at a time. Once you’ve seen them all, then you can decide…’

  ‘North,’ Farden announced, staring eastwards, where the Tausenbar faded into the creeping purple velvet of night. Heavy clouds lingered overhead, hinting of snow. ‘That’s where we’ll go, when we’re finished. To old Scalussen.’

  Nuka clapped his hands. ‘In the meantime, dinner is served. After you, Arkmage,’ he said, gesturing to Durnus. But he held up a pale hand and shook his head.

  ‘Farden and I will follow in a moment.’

  ‘We will?’ Farden asked. Durnus nodded in a way that made him not want to argue, even though his stomach rumbled chronically at the mention of dinner. Durnus waited for the others to file below before he turned to the mage, sightless eyes roving over his face. ‘I could say a hundred words to you, Farden. I could say a thousand…’ Farden wondered if this was a good moment to tell him how hungry he was, but he refrained. ‘But all I need to say is how proud I am. You have really proven yourself. Not just with this,’ he smacked him lightly on the shoulder, making his glistening armour clank, ‘but for what you did for Modren and Elessi, even to the words you spoke a moment ago about Scalussen, and the way you spoke them. I think it is time.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To pass on my legacy, like Korrin did to you,’ Durnus smiled. He gestured towards dinner. ‘After you, Arkmage.’

  Farden nearly fell overboard. ‘You’re joking, right?’

  ‘Why ever would I? I am too old for this game, Farden.’

  ‘What do you mean, too old? Aren’t you immortal?’

  ‘Aren’t you? And still younger than I?’

  ‘A fair point.’

  ‘Well then, I rest my case. Of course, I will humbly accept the old position of advisor, or mentor, if it is still available. But otherwise, I am done. I pass the title to you, Farden. My decision is final. The Arka need a strong Arkmage now, more than ever. Even if it is to be an Arkmage-in-exile.’

  Farden exhaled slowly while he shook his head, watching his hot breath escape as steam. There was a chill in the air. Clouds were gathering. ‘What about Modren?’ he asked.

  ‘He has asked to be your Undermage.’

  Farden exhaled a little more. ‘Okay,’ he said, after a moment of dizzying consideration. ‘I accept.’

  Durnus put his hand on his shoulder. ‘I knew you would,’ he whispered, ‘I knew you would.’ Farden might have been wrong, but it looked as though a huge weight had been lifted from his old friend’s shoulders. He smiled, even though he couldn’t see it. ‘After you, Arkmage. Dinner awaits.’

  ‘You are very persuasive, you know,’ Farden muttered as they went below.

  As they reached the door of the captain’s cabin, Farden paused. ‘I will be a moment,’ he said, leaving Durnus’ hand on the doorhandle. He turned the corner and found his cabin. He went in and locked the door, and then tugged something very thick and heavy from his haversack.

  The Grimsayer landed on the bed with a grumbling thud, making the bed itself creak. A certain black rat looked up from its little hollow in the pillow, squeaked, and promptly went back to sleep.

  Farden knelt down in front of the Grimsayer and gently lifted its pages. ‘Tyrfing,’ he said to it, and watched the lights go to work. It took them but a moment to draw him. Farden smiled at his uncle, kneeling there in the pebbles by a rushing river, smiling to the last.

  Farden nodded, closed the book and went to the door. Just before he left, a flash of white caught his eye, in the little porthole next to the door. Farden pressed his face to the uneven glass, and smirked to himself. He had been right after all. It was snowing outside.

  The End

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  It’s done. I couldn’t be happier.

  Emaneska has been a long and exci
ting road. Though rough and potholed in places, it has led me here, to the finale, to the culmination. Four years and four books later, I can’t help but be proud.

  And do you know what has helped me along this road? You. I’d like to acknowledge every single person thumbing this page or screen right this very minute. Give yourselves a hearty clap on the back. I want to thank you for enjoying the Emaneska Series. For picking it up and parting with your hard-earned cash. For sharing and retweeting. For the emails. For the stars and comments. For even just mentioning it in passing. You crazy lot keep me writing.

  I’d like to thank and also apologise profusely to those incredible people that I have the pleasure of calling my friends and family. I thank you for putting up with my wild and excited rambling about Emaneska, about Dead Stars, and what fictional pools I’ll be dipping my toes into next. And I apologise, mainly to your ears, for talking them to a raw pulp. I promise I’ll stop. One day. Maybe.

  I also owe my gratitude to those authors and other self-publishing indies out there that have inspired and educated me over the past four years. This industry is ever-changing, and indies are ever-working, and damn hard too. The alliances I have made and the communities I’ve been part of have helped me make some good decisions and helped me keep up the work I’ve been doing in the background behind the writing. Gods know there is a lot of it.

  I won’t be stopping writing any time soon. Not a chance. This may be the end of Emaneska, but it’s only the start for this young author. Even now, as I sit poring over my laptop, congratulatory whisky in hand, the clock-face showing something ungodly, I’m itching to get working on the next book. It will be strange not writing about Emaneska, not manhandling our favourite mage through trial and tribulation, but it will also be good to try something new and different.

  Who knows. Maybe I’ll return to Emaneska another day, once I’ve got some of the other ideas out of my system. Maybe I’ll write another series. Maybe I’ll call it the Scalussen Chronicles. But who knows…