by Ben Galley
Vice marched straight up to the first door he came to and pounded twice on its polished wood. The poor door rattled against its hinges. ‘Bane!’ he shouted, then thumped the door some more. ‘BANE!’ Bang. Bang. Bang.
The Arkmage was quickly losing his temper. He put his spare hand against the door and a spell rippled through the wood like a stone disturbing the placid surface of a lake. Locks clicked and turned and the door swung open very swiftly indeed. Vice stormed inwards, closely followed by Modren, who was beginning to regret his decision to deliver his news in person.
‘Bane! Wake up!’ yelled Vice. The room was dark, but a few of the silk curtains had been left open, and the gloomy morning light was just enough to see by. However it didn’t stop Modren knocking over several bottles with his foot. He decided to stay by the door. Vice, on the other hand, slammed the tearbook down on a table with a thunderous thud, still open at the offending page, and kicked the side of the huge bed that dominated most of the room.
Bane came awake with a rumbling growl like that of a landslide, and the four naked women that lay around him stirred from their slumbers. Probably too drunk to function, thought Modren. Bane pushed his women aside and swung his enormous legs over the edge of his bed. He was wearing nothing but a short kilt of weasel furs. It hid nothing. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ he barked, eyeing Modren with a look that could have killed. Vice stood with his arms crossed, brow furrowed in the very picture of disapproval. ‘He’s alive,’ he stated flatly.
Bane looked confused. ‘Who?’ he asked, but instead of replying Vice grabbed the tearbook from the table and dropped it into Bane’s lap. The king didn’t bat an eyelid. He calmly turned the book around and held it up so he could see the script in the grey light. It took a moment for him to read it, squinting and murmuring to himself, and when he was finished he shut the book with a thud and dropped it on the bed behind him, narrowly missing the forehead of one of the drowsy women in the process. ‘It doesn’t mean a thing. All that says is that they found a man on the ice fields, they took him in, patched him up, and after he turned, they banished him,’ Bane said. ‘It’s not him.’ The king reached for a nearby jug filled with a dark red liquid, but before he could get it anywhere near his lips Vice knocked it from his hand and the jug smashed on the marble floor with a crash. Snarling angrily, Bane got to his feet and stood toe to toe with the Arkmage. Vice was almost a foot shorter than the king, but he glared up at him with fierce eyes.
‘Try it,’ muttered Vice. Flame trailed around his clenched fingers. Modren pondered if he should step outside and leave them to it. But before he had made up his mind, Bane snorted, and sat back down, making the bed lurch. ‘He’s dead. We both saw it,’ he said.
‘Then explain the tearbook,’ countered Vice.
‘That dragon sorcery doesn’t prove anything,’ scoffed the king. ‘He was bitten. Ruin died. You know how the triad works.’
Vice felt like beating the stubbornness out of him, but somehow he resisted the temptation. Behind them Modren coughed politely and held up a hand. ‘If I may interrupt, sires,’ he began, and they both glared daggers at him. The mage continued. ‘We found a body this morning on the east side of the city.’
‘And you decided to waste our time with this news?’ asked Bane. Modren shook his head.
‘Well since you mentioned bites I thought this might be relevant. The soldier’s throat was missing and there were two unmistakable marks on his neck. A vampyre, sires.’
Vice looked at Bane with a concerned look. The king merely shrugged. Vice bit his lip in frustration and waved his hand at Modren. ‘You can leave, mage,’ he ordered. ‘Good work.’
Modren bowed and turned to go, but as he did a tall blonde woman, quite pregnant, blocked his escape. She looked as angry as the others, and the sight of the room in front of her did nothing to quench her indignant fury.
Princess Cheska pushed the bewildered mage out of her way and strode forward purposefully. ‘What’s going on here?’ she demanded. Bane stood up and began to usher her out, but she waved her hands at him and pointed at the women at the bed. ‘I see you’re enjoying the local fare?’ she snapped. Modren began to quietly leave one tiptoe at a time. ‘You’re disgusting,’ she spat.
‘This doesn’t concern you, Cheska,’ growled her father, but the princess began to pull at the bedcovers and grabbed several arms and legs in the process. One of the prostitutes awoke and began to kick back, obviously not understanding where she was and with whom she was struggling. Cheska slapped her hard in the face. Bane began to shout. The women started to scream, and the whole scene began to descend into chaos. Modren was now rooted to the spot, morbidly fascinated.
Just as Cheska’s fists began to crackle and spit with sparks, Vice moved to intercede. He grabbed the princess’s arms and held them tightly behind her back while he hissed in her ear.
‘That’s enough from you, my dear. I think you’ve made your point,’ he said. Cheska quickly gave up struggling. The Arkmage spun her around and fixed her with a penetrating gaze. ‘Why don’t you go and calm down, for all our sakes?’ suggested Vice, eyes momentarily switching to her pregnant belly. She squinted at him angrily and then reluctantly finally relented.
‘Modren,’ Vice called to the mage standing by the door. ‘Escort the princess to her rooms before she hurts herself or others. And take these whores with you,’ he ordered.
Modren bowed and quickly moved to accompany Cheska out of the room. He reached for her arm but she shrugged him off and moodily stormed out of the room. Vice lifted the naked women bodily from the king’s bed and pushed them towards the door. They muttered drunkenly and clutched clothes and blankets to themselves as they left. Bane shrugged and went to find more of his dark wine. Vice sighed.
Modren, whores in tow, dutifully followed the princess out of the room. He was confused and a little overwhelmed. The door slammed shut behind them and he wondered if he should say anything to the princess, but Cheska didn’t even look at him. A gaggle of handmaidens had gathered in the corridor and they fussed around her in a flurry of concerned and comforting noises. She pushed them aside and together they disappeared down the corridor, leaving Modren alone with the others. The half-naked women looked at him lopsidedly, as if there were two mages standing in the hall, and muttered amongst themselves. Modren wondered what he was going to do with four prostitutes in the middle of the Arkathedral. He sighed. It was going to be a long watch.
The night brought long shadows and a welcome cool breeze to the desert, and Farden could not have been more grateful. As the inexorable disc of the sun sank below the horizon once again, the mage slumped to the sand in the lee of one of the taller dunes. His chest heaved up and down and sweat poured down his face like a salty waterfall. Thank the gods for nightfall, he thought, and then let his head fall against the slope of sand behind him. Lafik had sent him to the dune sea to die. That much was certain. Farden had trudged over rock and dune and salt-flat for almost four days straight and still there had been no sign of his uncle. The man was like a ghost, and Farden was beginning to wonder if he even existed at all. But he refused to consider that possibility; somehow he knew different. There was one thing that was certain: Lafik was going to get an ugly surprise when Farden made it out of the dunes. Something much worse than a bruised throat.
Farden lay there until the sky turned a dusty pink, then purple, then velvet black. The cold gradually seeped back into the deserts of Paraia once again, and the heat of the day vanished like a mirage. Strange sounds floated on the cool breeze, sounds that Farden was starting to get used to. He reached for his flask and held it to his dusty mouth. A single drip dribbled out and wetted the tip of his parched tongue. Why had he never learnt any water spells, he wondered, frustrated. Farden decided that it was probably because he’d never expected to spend so much time traipsing around a desert. He shivered momentarily and dug his old black cloak out of his haversack to keep him warm in the cold desert night.
With
a tired grunt, the mage got to his feet and trudged to the top of the dune so he could survey his surroundings. The dune sea was aptly named. It was an ocean of rolling waves of sand, ever-shifting and always treacherous. Behind him to the west lay the salt-flats, now bathed in dusty orange and red light from the slumbering sun. To the north and south, were endless stretches of shivering sand as far as the eye could see. The only feature in the otherwise empty desert lay ahead of him: the dark smudge of a cliff face hovering on the horizon, now dark and hidden by dusk. Farden sat and watched it, looking for any hint of a campfire or twinkle of torchlight, but it was too far away, and his dusty eyes were tired.
The mage dug out the last of his rations from one of his pockets. There was a strange bread made with a grain of some kind, and a half-mouldy apple. He chewed the good side of the apple and then tossed the rest of it down the dune. He watched it roll and gather sand like a gritty snowball as he ate the bread. When he reached into his pocket for more food, a round object brushed against his hand. He prodded it. It was hard and stubborn. Making a face, the mage brought the mystery object forth and held it up to the bruised western sky. Pinched between his finger and thumb, he recognised it: the strange nut from Belephon market.
The mage looked at the small thing and scratched it with his fingernail. It looked like a bleached walnut, bumpy and wrinkled like a weathered face. Such a small pointless thing, he thought to himself. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. How could a simple nut lead him to his uncle? Farden shook his head slowly. He wondered if he should just eat it. He was hungry enough.
Once again the mage got to his feet and tossed the nut from palm to palm. It suddenly dawned on him that he had nothing left to lose. All his other possibilities had died in the heat a few days ago. It was always worth a try, he decided. After all, Paraia was such a strange sort of country, it just might work.
Farden stared up at the dark sky hanging above. The first stars of the evening were beginning to crawl, timidly, from their hiding places, the first pinpricks of light on an otherwise empty black canvas stretching from horizon to horizon. Farden had often found himself staring at them for hours on end. The moon had not yet appeared. The desert skies were once again as vast as they had been in his dreams. Almost endless.
With a weary smile, he gripped the nut tightly between finger and thumb and hurled it at the stars. The strange little nut rocketed into the darkness like a slingstone, straight upwards, and to his dismay, completely out of sight. He waited for a few moments with his hands cupped and ready to catch it as it fell, but nothing came. Grimacing, expecting to be knocked on the skull any moment, Farden held his hands over his head and watched out for the telltale little puff of sand, in case the breeze had taken it, but still nothing came. The mage stood there for a while, more than a little bewildered. With a disappointed sigh, he finally sat down and looked up at the dark skies that had stolen his nut. Still nothing. Nuts don’t just get stuck in the sky, he told himself. Maybe it had been carried off by the breeze, or perhaps it landed behind him. Either way, it was another opportunity wasted.
It was a long while before Farden finally gave up. With a grunt he stood up and began to think about walking somewhere, anywhere but there. A sudden wave of hopelessness pulled at his heart. He eyed the rocks in the distance and wondered if they were worth searching. Nothing lived out here besides scorpions and vultures, and even they starved in the endless heat. Farden sighed again. His feet felt like lumps of aching rock, his throat was full of sand, and his uncle was a myth. Farden had had enough.
Just as he was about to leave and head back in the gruelling direction he had come, a sudden flash of light caught his eye. Farden looked up and saw a single star suddenly outshine the rest. He watched, fascinated, as the star began to grow and grow, as if, impossibly, it were getting nearer by the second, and then suddenly the wind began to howl and the sand began to shake beneath his boots. For a brief moment, Farden stretched his hands up to feel the force of the wind and then, realising what was happening, he threw himself to the ground in a flurry of stinging sand. He had seen falling stars in his dreams before.
Farden covered his ears with his hands as the star plummeted out of the sky. With an ear-splitting scream and a blast of heat that made his skin sizzle, it passed overhead and hurtled into the distance, tentacles of white fire swirling behind it. Farden leapt to his feet to watch the star fall. Its glare almost blinded him and he had to shield his eyes with his hand, wincing as his eyes complained.
The blazing spectacle was short-lived. After a few seconds of deafening noise and blinding light, the radiant fireball ploughed into the sands somewhere near the cliffs. There was a huge flash of orange fire, and then a few moments later there came a deep rolling boom. The sand quivered under Farden’s boots.
Flummoxed and more than a little shocked, Farden stretched and clicked his neck from side to side. He dug his spyglass from his haversack and tried to measure the distance. It was to be a long walk, but Farden knew he had to investigate, and so, without any further hesitation, he set off to follow the smoky trail of the fallen star, intrigued to see what the morning would bring.
And so the night, mourning its loss, watched as the lone figure determinedly carved a trail of footprints through the dunes, weaving his way towards the glowing grave. Deep in the shadows, a pair of eyes watched him leave, sighed, twitched, and ran a finger through the sand.
It took the mage most of the night to get anywhere near the cliffs. By the time the first rays of dawn pierced the darkness, the mage was only a mile away from where the star had fallen. Black smoke rose from the centre of the crater, billowing upwards to join the dawn sky. There was a burning smell on the breeze, metallic like a blacksmith’s forge, and the sand had been scorched black from the heat. Here and there lay little shards of jagged rock, or dark lumps of molten sand. Farden prodded a few with his foot and made them sputter. The mage traipsed on.
As he approached the deep crater the star had gouged in the dunes, the sand grew harder and walking became surprisingly easier with every step. Under his feet, the sand crunched and crackled as though he were treading across broken shells or splintered glass. The air around him became hot.
Curiosity doubled Farden’s pace, and soon he was jogging across the shattered sand towards the crater. He came to a halt near the edge of the scorched hole, where the sand began to drop away, and then step by careful step he slowly made his way down, trying to avoid the areas that sizzled and spat. Around him, shards of rock still glowed bright orange. The night breeze had done nothing to cool them.
The star lay in pieces at the bottom of the crater, no more than a splintered collection of black pockmarked rocks, some as big as a door, some smaller than a coin, and they glowed like the dying embers of a fireplace. Farden held his hand over one for as long as he could, but even with his magick he couldn’t bear it for too long. This was a strange, and different type of heat.
Something sparkled in between the big rocks and caught his eye. Holding his hand over his face, Farden leant forward to examine the curious object and he soon noticed a little stone protruding from the sand, an altogether different kind of stone. It was a glittery thing, not pockmarked and half-melted like the others, but almost crystalline in appearance. The mage ripped a strip of cloth from the bottom of his cloak and bent forward to try to pick it up. He scrunched up his face as the heat scorched his cheeks. Luckily he managed to snag it with the cloth and he slowly and carefully retrieved it. Like the others around it, the little rock was very hot, so he wrapped it in the cloth to hold it. The thing was about the same size as his lost nut, almost spherical in shape, with a rugged multi-faceted surface, and a pale brass colour. It looked very much like the one he had bought in Krauslung, for Cheska, all those long months ago, the glowing rock Vice had taken from him. A brief pang of emotion flitted across his chest, and then it was gone. Farden contemplated leaving it there, but something in the back of his mind told him to keep it.
; Taking his stone, Farden left the crater as quickly as he could and retreated to the relative cool of a nearby dune. He sat down and took his boots off so his feet could cool down, and then stretched out on the sand once again. He rolled the lump of golden rock over and over in his hands until it had cooled, and then, after staring at it for a very long time indeed, he put it deep in his pocket to keep it safe.
High above, the vast sky was beginning to blush and turn the colour of dawn. It wouldn’t be long until the sun appeared over the cliffs, bringing with it the unbearable heat. Farden lifted his head to look at the tall cliffs in the distance. There could be water there, he thought, or caves, or at the very least some shade for the day. For the moment, he decided, they were his only option. After a brief half hour of rest, he was on his feet again and racing the sunrise to the shade of the cliffs.
Farden reached the shadow of the cliff face shortly after dawn, already soaked with sweat and exhausted. The night had all but disappeared. The dunes behind him shimmered in the early heat waves. Farden put his hands on his knees and tried to spit in the sand but his mouth was too dry. The mage had had enough of this desert.
Farden stretched, weary bones clicking, and looked up at the cliff face that blotted out half of the sky. It rose out of the sand at an almost perfect right angle, completely sheer and, with the exception of a few scrubby plants clinging to life along the rock face, completely featureless. There were no caves, no trickling stream, only brown sandy rock. Farden sighed and shook his head. Just his luck, he told himself.
The mage wandered along the cliff face for an hour or so, peering into the occasional nook and cranny, prodding and poking at any signs of running water, but still the obstinate wall of rock remained fruitless and dead. There was also something else bothering him.
