Pale Kings (Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

  Unfortunately the jerky wingbeats of the gryphon did nothing to ease the nausea. Gryphons weren’t built like dragons; those scaly beasts could soar like fog through a glen. However, he reminded himself, he would rather be sitting on top than hanging from Ilios’s claws. Farden took a quick peek at Durnus as he hung like a limp fish in the grasp of a fortuitous seagull. For the first half an hour of the flight, the vampyre had tried his best to remain poised and rigid, but now he had given up and fallen as limp as he could manage without falling out of the gryphon’s grip. He looked cold and windswept, and very eager to be back on the ground. Eyrum, on the other hand, looked as stoic as ever, squinting at the wind with his strong arms crossed, legs dangling in the air.

  Tyrfing had remained silent and still for the whole flight, which for Farden was a good thing. He wasn’t in the mood for talking. Despite potentially saving their lives, Farden was still angry with his uncle. A weight sat on his heart. In the mage’s eyes, Tyrfing owed him, and he didn’t care about apologies.

  All that mattered to the mage now was moving on with the war, getting rid of Vice and Bane, and getting hold of Cheska and his child. His uncle was unpredictable and isolated and totally consumed by fear, but he was also valuable and powerful. Apologies be damned, thought the mage, they now had a powerful weapon on their side: Tyrfing, a weapon who would do anything to make it up to his nephew.

  Farden put those thoughts aside for the moment and concentrated on holding on tightly as Ilios began to weave his way through the treetops, looking for an open space where he could finally land. Farden cautiously opened his eyes, finding himself level with the tips of the pines, and waited until the gryphon found a small mossy knoll that was to his liking. Below them, a handful of deer scattered nervously into the forest, disturbed by the loud flapping noises and the heavy breathing of the strange beast in the granite sky.

  With his last reserves of strength, Ilios hovered just long enough for Durnus and Eyrum to drop to the ground, and then he collapsed into a heap amidst the cold grass and crunchy moss. Farden could feel the gryphon deflate beneath him, utterly exhausted. The mage swiftly hopped onto the ground, as did Tyrfing, and they began to stretch their legs with much groaning and grunting. Beside them Eyrum rubbed his frozen arms and cheeks while Durnus carefully readjusted his rumpled clothes and scrunched his eyes as his olds bones clicked in and out of place.

  ‘Never. Again,’ managed the vampyre, as he stamped his foot in an effort to wake it up. Sniffing the frigid air, he hobbled over to the tired gryphon, who whistled and blinked at the approaching vampyre. Ilios seemed very intrigued by the dusty old man. There was a strange glint in his hunter’s eyes.

  ‘Careful Durnus,’ warned Farden, as he clicked his neck from side to side. Tyrfing took a step forward, but the vampyre held up a hand and pointed to the underside of the gryphon’s left wing, near to his shoulder. ‘Look there,’ he said. They looked, and Tyrfing carefully parted the gryphon’s feathers to investigate. When he withdrew his hands they were smeared with a streak of blood so dark that it bordered on black. Tyrfing knelt in the cold grass and ran his hand along the underside of Ilios’s wing until he found the stub of the broken arrow. The gryphon winced and mewled a discordant cry, like a broken flute.

  ‘Easy old boy,’ whispered Tyrfing as he probed about with his fingers. Ilios shut his eyes and growled deep in his throat. After a moment, Tyrfing got to his feet. ‘Well, it’s a miracle we even got this far. The arrow’s deep in the muscle and near to the bone. It won’t be coming out in a hurry,’ he sighed.

  ‘The dragon healers in Hjaussfen are used to arrow wounds. They could help him,’ offered Eyrum, not one for letting any animal suffer.

  ‘As great as that is, Ilios isn’t going anywhere for the moment’ replied Tyrfing, shaking his head. Eyrum shrugged and walked away.

  ‘And you can bet that the good Arkmage has sent a whole battalion into the mountains to look for us. We’ve got a day at the most,’ muttered Farden.

  Tyrfing looked up at the grey skies and sniffed the cold air. The tall, snow-dusted pine trees shivered and whispered in the breeze, green and brown needles brushing against their neighbours. The undergrowth rustled with shivering and nervous creatures: mice, voles, birds, all waiting for the newcomers to move on. With a clink of armour Tyrfing shrugged his shoulders and took a seat in the damp grass next to his gryphon. ‘Let them come,’ he said.

  Farden inwardly sighed and looked around at the surrounding forest. Durnus, sensing the awkwardness, chuckled and looked to Eyrum. ‘Like uncle like nephew, I suppose.’ The Siren just made a face and pulled his cloak around his shoulders.

  An hour later, not much had changed on the grassy knoll. Ilios lay fast asleep, curled up and twitching occasionally in his dreams, whilst Tyrfing sat crossed-legged beside him, tinkering with his strange armour. He would occasionally mumble something to himself as something twanged under his fingers, and then all would be quiet again. No birds sang in the forest, and apart from the occasional rustling of an inquisitive forest creature they seemed to be very much alone in the wild woods.

  Eyrum was busying himself with his clothes. The Siren sat on a mossy tree stump at the foot of the knoll, holding his black cloak up to his good eye and inspecting a rather large tear in one sleeve. There was an arrow hole in the hood as well. ‘Bloody arrows,’ he muttered. Eyrum fished around in his travel pack for a moment before producing a thin whalebone needle and a foot or so of thick white thread. It would do, he decided, and he proceeded to sew up the holes. It was only a cheap cloak, after all.

  As he sewed, he cast a look at the mage sitting behind him. Tyrfing was thoroughly engrossed in his intricate armour. Eyrum watched him for a moment, noting the scars on his wrists and hands, the smattering of grey hairs that ran through his dark hair and beard like cracks in a glacier, the wrinkles at the corners of his mouth and eyes, and how he whispered to himself while he worked. Except for the colour of his eyes and the beard, he was the spitting image of Farden. Eyrum guessed his age to be around fifty or sixty years old, perhaps even older. It was very odd for a Written to reach such an age. However, if what Durnus had told him was true, Tyrfing was far from normal, and very different from the average Written. Eyrum could feel a strange energy coming from Tyrfing, alien to his Siren senses, not quite like Farden and not quite like anything else. Despite what his natural mistrustful instincts told him, Eyrum was intrigued.

  As soon as the holes in his cloak were patched, Eyrum stood up to stretch and hang his cloak over the bough of an old fir tree. He scuffed his boots against the rough bark of the tree to get rid of the mud and broken glass and blood. He sniffed the cold air, wondering when Farden and Durnus would return with food. Evening was slowly sneaking up on the day, and from between the shivering treetops he could spy the yellow sun teetering on the tops of the distant snow-bound mountains in the west. The big Siren finished cleaning his boots and then turned to the quiet mage on the knoll.

  ‘Almost time for a fire,’ Eyrum commented, quietly. Tyrfing looked up as if he had completely forgotten Eyrum was there, which in truth he had, and put a cupped hand to his ear, narrowly avoiding poking himself in the forehead with one of his tools.

  ‘What?’ asked the mage.

  ‘Almost time for a fire, I said,’ repeated the Siren.

  Tyrfing seemed to think for a moment, and then nodded once. ‘Sounds good,’ he replied, and then went straight back to tinkering with his armour. Eyrum grunted and shook his head, and began to cast around for some dry wood, which, unsurprisingly, seemed rather lacking in the cold and frozen forest.

  Every hopeful log the Siren found was either damp or rotten, or both, and the surrounding trees called for an axe, so Eyrum decided to attack some of the smaller branches. With his strong hands, he wrenched a half-dead limb from its tree and twisted it free. He broke off two more of roughly the same size and then carried them, pine-cones, needles, and all back to the knoll. Tyrfing was still thoroughly engrossed in his bu
siness. Eyrum wondered what was so interesting about a piece of armour that it required that much attention. He rolled his eye and began to break the branches into smaller bits.

  ‘Do you mind?’ asked Eyrum, and once again Tyrfing looked up as though he were surprised to hear another voice.

  ‘Do I mind what?’ he asked.

  The Siren snapped a twig. ‘Helping with the fire?’

  Tyrfing cleared his throat. ‘No, I suppose not,’ he mumbled, placing his tools back into their leather pouch. He walked down to where the pile of firewood was steadily growing. ‘Is this it?’ he asked the Siren, pointing to the collection of branches and sticks.

  The big man ignored the question. ‘My flint and tinder isn’t going to light anything else in this forest. I assumed you might have a better idea?’ Eyrum replied gruffly. This mage was quickly getting on his nerves. Maybe his Siren instincts had been right all along, he surmised.

  ‘Of course,’ said Tyrfing, buttoning his long leather jacket and pulling the collar up around his ears. He seized a nearby log and yanked it free of its mossy grave, disturbing a whole nest of burrowing beetles and earwigs and worms. The old mage dragged the log to the pile of branches and dusted off his grubby hands.

  ‘There,’ he said.

  Eyrum shrugged and looked down at the rotten log and the strange mage. ‘Is that it?’ he grunted.

  Tyrfing shook his head. ‘Stand back, Siren,’ he said, and waved his hand. Eyrum took a few steps back and crossed his arms. Tyrfing cracked a knuckle and flicked his hand towards the pile of wood. White-hot flames streamed from his crooked fingers. The wet wood hissed and spat and crackled and complained, but regardless of its soggy nature the pile was aflame within seconds. Tyrfing was already finding a spot to sit down. ‘There we go,’ he said. He looked up at the slate sky once more and watched the sparks float about like fireflies. ‘It’ll be dark in a few hours.’

  Eyrum remained standing but he stretched out his hands to warm them on the hot flames. ‘The others should be back soon,’ he said. ‘Farden and Durnus have gone to find us food.’

  ‘Mhm,’ mumbled Tyrfing. Eyrum sensed a little hint of tension there.

  ‘How’s your gryphon?’ asked the Siren.

  Tyrfing looked over his shoulder to where Ilios lay, curled up like a cat and deep in a healing sleep. ‘He should be fine as long as we get that arrow out soon. He just isn’t used to the cold.’

  ‘Then he should enjoy Nelska,’ replied Eyrum.

  Tyrfing looked at the Siren and repeated the word. ‘Nelska.’

  Eyrum poked the crackling fire with a long stick and let the smell of burning pine resin fill his nostrils. It was sickly sweet, and aromatic, but it reminded him of the roaring fires of Hjaussfen, and he breathed in the aroma. ‘The ice has almost overtaken our northern borders, and the sea and her waves continue to pound the shores in the south and east. I hear that most of our ships have been either trapped in ice or wrecked in their own harbours. The Long Winter is getting worse by the day,’ he commented conversationally.

  Tyrfing was still looking at Eyrum, at the grey scales that graced his cheekbones and chin and at the scar that ran down the left side of his face and his neck like a knotted river curving across a pale map. ‘It’s been many years since I last went to Nelska. Many years indeed.’

  Eyrum looked up and met Tyrfing’s gaze. ‘How long?’ he asked.

  There was a moment between the two men. One of those awkward moments nobody likes to share, an uncomfortable, itchy moment. Ones that occasionally crop up in uneasy conversations, where both parties know the answer to a difficult, anxious question.

  Tyrfing ran his tongue around the backs of his bottom teeth. ‘Twenty, maybe twenty-five years,’ he replied.

  Eyrum stabbed the fire with his stick. ‘A long time indeed,’ he said. ‘If I remember rightly, twenty-five years ago there was a war on in Nelska.’

  Tyrfing nodded. ‘That there was,’ he said. His skin felt prickly in the heat from the fire.

  Eyrum took a slow, deep breath through his nose. ‘Well then. Perhaps you should keep that quiet when we get to Nelska. There are plenty there who still have a bone to pick. Especially with a mage like yourself.’ And that was all he had to say on the matter. He turned to face away from the mage and closed his eyes.

  Tyrfing took the advice and looked down into the flames. Perhaps he should have stayed in the desert, where he was alone and didn’t have to answer to anybody, he suddenly thought. Behind him, Ilios grumbled in his sleep, and the mage sighed, slightly ashamed of himself for thinking that. He wondered how many more bones there were to be picked.

  Farden was also thinking about bones. The mage stood alone in the forest, deep in the trees where the branches and coniferous leaves strangled the daylight and turned it gloomy and dark, where the bark and wood and ice creaked and moaned, where things fidgeted in the shrubbery, and where tiny snow-clogged streams gurgled over rocks and hillocks, splashing and dripping over gnarled tree roots and deer paths. Everywhere he looked bushy firs and spruce jostled for space with ancient leafless oaks. Dead trees like broken fingers groped for the last taste of sunshine, but their last efforts were stifled by the thick evergreen canopy above.

  The mage stood in the middle of an old deer-path, still and silent, staring at the carcass of a dead crow that had somehow found its way into the depths of the thick forest. Most of the skin and feathers were gone. Only the white bones and a scrap of flesh remained. Worms, maggots, and other slithering creatures were busy devouring the rest. The forest, apparently, ate its own to survive.

  Farden sighed and kicked the macabre object aside, wondering if there was anything to eat in this forest besides moss and pine needles and crow bones. Despite following the deer trail for more than a mile, there had been no sign of even the smallest animal. The wild woods were empty.

  Ignoring his rumbling stomach, Farden kept walking and listened to the creaking of the trees around him as he plodded through the undergrowth. The deer-path led him a merry winding trail through the snow-covered loam and ferns to a gully where the trees and bushes thinned out. A lonely shaft of waning daylight pierced the foliage above and fell at Farden’s feet. He watched the dust motes floating in the sunbeam.

  Just then, something rustled in the trees ahead of him, something larger than a mouse or a vole, larger even that a deer, something heavy, something with four feet and a tail. Farden looked up and his gaze met the piercing blue eyes of a huge grey timber wolf, lips curled in a toothy sneer and tail swishing back and forth as it sized up its next meal. The wolf looked hungry, very hungry indeed. Even through its shaggy winter coat, Farden could see its thin ribs.

  Farden calmly watched the big animal pad its way into the gully, furry paws trampling leaf and loam, muscled shoulders rippling, grey fur standing up on the nape of its neck. All the while its crystal blue eyes never left Farden for a second.

  The wolf came to a halt a dozen paces from him, bared a mouth full of milk-white and jagged teeth, and then growled a low rumbling growl. It was a noise that would have made the hairs on a lesser man’s arm stand on end. Farden held its piercing look, slowly and carefully taking his hands from his cloak pockets.

  Just as the mage was about to take a step forward, there came another noise from his left. From the corner of his eye, Farden spotted two more wolves emerging from a tangled holly bush, both as big as the first, if not bigger. Each had eyes so blue they bordered on white, and they stared unblinkingly at Farden as though he were a fat rabbit caught in a snare. Hot breath billowed from their jaws. They growled, and rattled, and pawed at the leaves under their claws. All was silent in the woods except for their rumbling.

  A gentle gust of wind stirred the treetops. Nothing and nobody moved.

  Magick stirred in the mage’s veins, tingled the tips of his fingers.

  Ready to pounce.

  But fortunately it never came to that. The wolves seemed to sense something in the air, something that scared them
. Their wet noses sniffed at the forest air as they looked at each other and whined. Their tails curled between their legs and slowly they began to back away from the mage and slink back into the dark forest. The first wolf was the last to leave, and as he trotted into the trees with his tail firmly between his legs, he looked back at Farden with those piercing and beautiful blue eyes. That strange look would stick in the mage’s mind for the rest of his days. It was a haunting look of fear and respect, from one animal to another, and it made the mage feel odd inside, wild and strange.

  Within moments, the hungry wolf had disappeared into the forest and Farden was once again alone. Or at least he thought he was. A dry whisper came from behind him, and Farden couldn’t help but jump a little, though he didn’t turn around.

  ‘They seemed to like you,’ said Durnus.

  Farden shrugged. ‘Apparently I’m not to their taste.’

  ‘Hmm, wolves can be picky,’ murmured the vampyre. ‘I’ve always marvelled at their knack of staring past your eyes and straight into your soul.’

  ‘You should try looking at a lycan, or a gryphon for that matter,’ replied the mage. He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder and turned around to face his old friend.

  ‘It’s good to see you again,’ said Durnus, and Farden smiled. In the fading light of the forest his friend looked even older than he already was. As the daylight was failing, Durnus had removed the black scarf from his face. The evening shadows made the weathered cracks in his skin stand out like the ridges of a mountain range, and his skin had taken on a translucent, paper-like quality. There was a glowing patch of sunburn across the bridge of his nose and around his eyes. A day or two’s worth of grey stubble covered his chin and jaw and the gap between his upper lip and nose. For all his usual calm and aplomb, Durnus looked stressed and tired, and his pale blue eyes, even paler than the wolves’, were like glacial ice, serene on the surface but tense and cracking underneath.