by Ben Galley
Pale Kings
Book Two of
The Emaneska Series
By Ben Galley
Published by BenGalley.com
Copyright © Ben Galley 2012
The right of Ben Galley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Cover by Mikael Westman
Original Illustration by Claudia West
Professional Dreaming by Ben Galley
Any fan fiction and fan art is more than welcome.
“This book is a work of fiction, but some works of fiction contain perhaps more truth than first intended, and therein lies the magic.”
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About the Author
Ben Galley is a young author from bucolic England, and is convinced that a dragon is hiding in his garden shed. He spends his time daydreaming, writing books, and telling tall tales, and is forever grateful for the invention of the spellchecker and the discovery of caffeine. You will probably find him lurking on several social media sites; do not encourage him.
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THE WRITTEN and PALE KINGS are also now available to buy in Paperback and Special Edition Hardback!
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To all of you who were kind enough to read my first book. To the proof-readers. To the booksellers. To the retweeters. To the Facebook army. To the reviewers. To the intrigued and slightly confused. Without your kind words and the persistent support that occasionally bordered on harassment, I would never have finished this sequel.
Thank you.
This book is for you.
Table of Contents
Title Page
About the Author
Maps
A Prelude to Pale Kings
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part Two
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part Three
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
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A Prelude to Pale Kings
There was once a sea at the edge of the world. The Lonely Sea. A quiet and mirror-like sea that spent its days contentedly lapping the pebble-strewn and sandy fringes of the land. Today, however, it seemed afraid to push its frothing fingers up the tar-black sands of one beach in particular. Perhaps it was the waning of the tide, perhaps it was the stillness in the air that the waves were reticent to disturb, or perhaps it was the alarming creature standing at the water’s edge.
The hulking beast stood like a black obelisk on the gently sloping sands. It stared at the water, breathing in slow, contemplative grunts. Its cluster of crimson eyes were like rockpools of deep, luminescent blood. Translucent wings hung from its huge shoulders; wings that were more smoke than skin, shadow rather than bone. The beast crouched to the sand, steel armour clanking, and dug a spade-like finger into the sand. A iron claw, speckled with rust, slid from its calloused sheath, and the beast drew a slow circle in the sand, like a farmer furrowing an untouched field.
When it was finished, the beast stood up again, and curiously dipped a foot that resembled a giant, clawed hoof into the nervous, quiet sea. The water hissed and steamed, and the wave shrank back into the sea. Even nature itself recoiled from a daemon’s touch.
‘Lord!’ came a rasping cry, ruining the tranquility. ‘Majesty!’
The daemon slowly turned around, grumbling. Its skin cracked and sparked as it did so. Behind him, pounding across the black sand, came another daemon much like himself, though not nearly as huge nor as ominous. This beast had skin painted with white clay. Its horns had been filed short and formal. A thin blue pennant had been tied to the upper portion of his left arm, the tails of which flapped and crackled even despite the lack of wind. ‘I have news,’ wheezed the daemon, as he came near to bow low and respectfully to his master.
‘Speak,’ ordered the larger daemon. His claw slid back into its sheath with a metallic rasp.
‘Your slaveling, lord, it insists on giving birth.’
The larger daemon thumped his chest with a fist the size of a small boulder. ‘Then why is the disobedient wretch still in one piece?’
The smaller daemon bowed his horned head, as if the words it were about to utter were heresy. ‘It demands your presence, lord.’
‘It demands?’ rumbled the first.
‘Yes, lord. Quite vocally.’
With a growl that sounded as though a tree were being ripped in half, his master turned back to the Lonely Sea, and stamped his hoof in the water. It hissed again. ‘It can demand and complain until the Tree sprouts fruit, if it so wishes. My orders remain. Go back and snap the little louse in two. Bring the larger half to me.’
The other daemon hesitated then, rubbing his claws together. He lowered his head even further. ‘If I may be so bold, lord…’
A sigh. ‘Speak your mind then, cousin.’
‘I am sure you would agree, lord, that should this, this, um, offspring, be of an intriguing nature, then perhaps investigating its potential might be worth your time, lord.’
The larger daemon turned and regarded his inferior with a curious look. ‘Meaning what?’
‘In my humble opinion, majesty, the offspring is rather intriguing.’
‘Intriguing?’
‘Yes, lord. It exhibits several rather, er, unusual qualities.’
The daemon wrinkled a lip bristling with thick black hairs. ‘Azkeroth.’
‘Yes, lord?’
‘This endless sea is intriguing, the sheer size of a hydra’s heart is intriguing, the pattern of scars we carved on the cursed moon are intriguing. There is nothing intriguing about the disfigured offspring of a human slaveling, especially my human slaveling. The only aspect of this that does intrigue me is why we are continuing this futile conversation, Azkeroth.’
There was another moment of hesitation from the second daemon, Az
keroth. He wheezed and cleared his throat, feeling his master’s blood-red gaze burning into his patchwork skull. ‘Perhaps, lord, if you were to come and see for yourself?’ he suggested.
‘Bah!’ his master snarled. Azkeroth did not flinch. To flinch was suicide. He did not particularly fancy spending another hundred years in the Void. The iron claws sprang from their sheaths and raked Azkeroth’s skull, carving three long gashes across his black and grey scalp, right between his horns. The ragged cuts glowed red as blood, hot as magma, seeped from them. Azkeroth did not move. He did not even wince. ‘Lord, I must insist,’ he urged, firmly.
There was a moment of silence, in which the whispering sea slid up and down the beach three times. ‘Very well,’ said the larger daemon. Azkeroth was barged aside as his master swept from the shoreline, smouldering wings trailing behind him in his wake. Azkeroth scuttled after him, barely managing to keep up with his master’s long, purposeful strides.
One behind the other, the two daemons marched up the beach and over a small hillock where streaks of yellow sand were attempting to encroach on the black sand of the beach. Spindly dunegrass grew in brave patches here and there. Their purple roots were bared and vulnerable. The daemons spared them no sympathy. As they passed each plant, the smoky tendrils of their wings wafted across the spear-like leaves and knobbly roots, choking and throttling them until they wilted and died. The daemons marched on without so much as a second glance. It was normality for them.
Soon, they came to the edges of their warcamp, a sprawling, deformed monster of a place, perpetually shrouded with smoke and ringing with the sounds of war. Hammers pounded and metal pealed. Shouts echoed. Ruby fires glowed through the humid haze.
As they approached a pair iron gates, Azkeroth’s master reached to wipe his bristled brow, and when he withdrew his claws, a circlet of fire was burning on his forehead, resting gently on his cracked skin, the crown of his position. Standing near to the open gates were two tall and long-limbed creatures. They were lithe and wiry, with flat faces and flared nostrils, and their charcoal-grey skin was covered in lavish silver armour. In their long-fingered hands they held the sharp pikes of the camp guard. They stamped their feet in salute as their lord and master passed. The daemons nodded to the elves, and entered the camp.
If a visitor had braved the Lonely Sea, and perchance landed on the black shores, and been unfortunate enough to stumble across the elven warcamp, then the smell alone would have killed them. The tentacles of smoke that rose through the cracks in the sand were a noxious orange colour, sulphurous and as thick as week-old stew, and when they mixed with the warcamp miasma of rotting death, it created a noxious, deadly stench. The elves paid it no attention; they had become accustomed to it. The daemons enjoyed it; for them it was the smell of home. But the slavelings, the humans forced to work the mines and latrines and forges and woodcamps and manors of the elves and daemons, they choked on it. They called it the bloodlung, due to the constant, raw coughing it caused. If a slaveling was lucky enough to survive his or her masters, then the bloodlung would finish them off for sure. It was a cursed life, the life of a human.
Once inside the gates, the two daemons did not slow their pace. As they marched, Azkeroth looked around, checking everything was as it should be. As second camplord, this was his duty, and it was a duty that demanded constant vigilance. The elves needed constant reminders to keep them in line. They had grown fat and restless in the last year. With the gods in hiding and the humans subdued, they had nothing to keep them occupied. Daemons had to make work for idle elves.
Azkeroth’s crimson eyes pierced the grey, smoky haze, examining and checking his warcamp. A phalanx of elves trained on a plaza of crystallised sand. A wall was in construction around one of the manor houses. A trio of daemons stood on the balcony of a barracks, silent and ponderous. An elf in armour bellowed orders at a line of slaves as they waited to collect the day’s meagre rations. Hollow-eyed humans stared out from between the bars of an iron fence, watching as a nearby group of soldiers gathered around a cooking fire to slice the meat from the bones of a very familiar-looking creature.
‘Azkeroth,’ the rumbling voice shook the daemon from his reverie, and his head snapped forward.
‘Majesty?’
His master kept walking. Even though he faced away from Azkeroth, his deep voice could still be heard over the noise of the warcamp. ‘If you have wasted my time, there shall be consequences.’
‘I understand, lord’ replied Azkeroth, confidently. He had already seen the slaveling child. He knew his master would be intrigued.
They soon came to a large basalt dome encircled by roads of crystallised sand and a huge black iron fence. Elf patrols marched up and down the roads. Nearby, a group of young elven females, clad in their finest clothes, sat on a long bench and watched the elven men pass by, like falcons watching parading rabbits. Occasionally, one of them would whistle at a particular soldier and they would snigger and whisper conspiratorially amongst themselves. Azkeroth had always been confused by mortal mating rituals. With a black look and a wheeze, he made a mental note to confine the camp’s nonessentials to their manors and tents in the future. The elven soldiers had enough distractions as it was without bothersome females.
It was then that Azkeroth noticed the noise. An impossible high-pitched wailing noise that cut through the cacophony of thudding boots, hammers, and construction like a hot axe through lard. It sounded as though a nest of screech-owls were being strangled. The master stopped dead in his tracks. His translucent wings spread wide. Claws slid from their sheaths. Smoke oozed from the cracks in his skin. A deep growl reverberated in his throat. Both daemons knew exactly what it was; it was a noise common in the slaveling compounds. It was a noise that drove daemons wild with fury.
Armour clanking, Azkeroth’s master pounded towards the basalt dome, his own manor house. He wrenched the door from its hinges and flung it aside, terrifying a group of slavelings as he did so, and bounded up a short flight of stairs towards the noise. He sniffed the air and snorted flame. He could smell human blood in the smoky air. He stormed into his chambers and found three more daemons waiting there. They stood at the archway of an adjoining room, scowling and wincing as the wailing noise rose and fell in pitch. They swiftly bowed as their master stomped forward and ducked under the archway. It was there that he found the source of the hateful noise. It was held tightly to the naked breast of his private slaveling, who was lying sweaty and wide-eyed on a pile of threadbare and dirty blankets, womb swollen with her forbidden pregnancy. A number of house slavelings lay prostrated beside her, quivering fearfully. The daemon growled. The candles in the room grew brighter in his presence. Their wicks sizzled loudly, as if eager to impress. The baby, oblivious to what stood over it, continued to wail.
‘Silence it!’ bellowed the daemon. The slaveling quickly covered up the baby’s mouth with her grimy hand.
‘You disobedient cur,’ began the daemon. ‘I return from hunting to find this, this bastard in my house? I ordered you to deal with it.’
‘He is your son,’ muttered the woman. It took a very brave human to speak like that to a daemon, especially a daemon such as her master. Claws slid under chin and she whimpered. ‘Hold him, and you’ll see,’ she said, holding the baby up to his face. It stayed silent.
The daemon wrinkled his lip and threw the child a cursory glance. To his surprise, the thing was not disfigured as the others had been, but whole, unblemished, and normal. Human. He sniffed at it, tasting the scent of its blood. Its skin was the colour of campfire ash, a pale off-white that was a stark contrast to the red-blooded skin of the other slavelings. The daemon sheathed two of his sharp claws and seized the child between two huge fingertips, holding it closer to his face. He had half a mind to rip it in two, there and then, but there was something in the child’s eyes, now open and calm, that stopped him. It seemed mesmerised by the fiery crown on his forehead. Behind him, Azkeroth shuffled into the room. ‘Can you feel it, majes
ty?’
His master couldn’t deny it. ‘I can.’
‘What are we to do with it?’
The daemon stared at the strange baby that dangled helplessly and silent between his coarse, charcoal fingers. ‘Have there been others like this one? Ones I have not been informed of?’
‘None, lord.’
‘Why you, then, I wonder?’ he pondered, staring down at his slaveling. Her breathing was quick and fast. She looked exhausted. Her tawny red hair lay in wet strands down her chest and arms. The slavebrand around her neck glistened with sweat. He had plucked her from a compound a year ago. The humans were loathsome creatures, god-blessed, fleshy, and weak, but every now and again, one somehow managed to catch his eye. He did not know why. Despite their fragility, the humans exhibited an inextinguishable hunger for survival, a trait his kind had tried very hard to beat and breed out of them over the centuries. This particular slaveling had a rather stubborn streak of rebelliousness, and for some strange reason that had appealed to him. It was like taming a wild animal, a feral creature; the thrill is in the success.
She wasn’t the first he had mated with. It had been an unnatural practice at first, but so was everything the first time it was done. Repetition forged normality. He had half expected her to die from the encounter, much like his others had, but somehow she had survived, again and again, over and over. And now this. The hulking daemon growled and a wisp of smoke escaped from the side of his mouth. The baby made a strange gurgling sound, and reached up to grab at the smoke with his chubby, clumsy fingers. The daemon narrowed his many eyes at the little creature. There was a strange energy emanating from this child that both perturbed and fascinated him. Azkeroth had been right indeed. Somehow, there was magick in it, daemon magick.
‘You know he’s different, don’t you, lord Orion?’ said one of the other daemons.
‘He knows,’ said the female slaveling, impertinently. ‘He knows. Even I can feel it.’
