Pale Kings (Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

  ‘Where’s Durnus?’ asked Lakkin. Farden shrugged, but Brightshow cleared her throat with a growl.

  ‘He’s coming back now, I can see him picking his way through the trees,’ she said. The dragon was right, and after several minutes the vampyre rejoined them. He sat down beside the fire silently.

  ‘Where did you go?’ Farden asked.

  Durnus stared at the flames. ‘Just wanted to stretch my legs,’ he said. Farden eyed his friend with a suspicious look. Ever since they had returned to Nelska he had been in a strange mood, furtive and gloomy, and going on plenty of “leg-stretching” expeditions. Farden hummed to himself, and caught Durnus’s eye. The vampyre held his gaze for a moment, saying nothing and yet speaking volumes, and then looked away. There was definitely something wrong with his old friend.

  ‘Meat’s ready,’ said Lakkin, and the mage and rider grabbed their plates and began to carve off chunks of fatty and delicious meat with their knives. Durnus simply sipped something from a flask and stared blankly into the orange flames.

  ‘So then,’ began the dragon-rider, ‘where do we find these Dukes?’

  Farden swallowed his mouthful and wiped the grease from his chin. ‘Well, there’s our favourite the Duke of Leath, a little to the south of here,’ began the mage. At the mention of Leath Durnus groaned. ‘And the rest of them are based mostly further the south and to the west, which is a problem for us because their duchies are spread far apart. Farfallen hasn’t given us much time at all.’

  ‘Which are most likely to help?’ Lakkin asked.

  Durnus snorted. ‘None,’ he said.

  ‘Then which is the most powerful?’ asked Brightshow.

  ‘Wodehallow, Gaughan, Leath, maybe Pendyrn at a push,’ said Durnus.

  ‘Leath?’ Farden echoed, slightly confused. Leath was a tiny town on top of a lonely hill. It had no army. ‘You’d be surprised,’ answered Durnus. ‘Old Leath holds a lot of sway with the other Dukes, and has a lifetime of favours to call on.’ The vampyre shrugged. ‘It is hard to tell these days. Their lands change hands constantly, and their people are traded with it. They’re a bunch of useless squabblers, and their soldiers are nothing more than mercenaries and peasants.’

  ‘That’s helpful,’ murmured Farden between mouthfuls.

  ‘Maybe not, but it is true,’ he replied. Durnus was right. The crepitating fire and the sound of chewing filled the silence.

  ‘Well it isn’t all doom and gloom, at least it isn’t raining.’

  ‘Keep telling yourself that,’ grinned Lakkin. ‘I give it an hour before the next downpour.’

  Suddenly Brightshow hissed and they all fell quiet, instantly dropping their plates and flasks. Farden put a hand to the fire and they were quickly enveloped by thick darkness. The sound of the wind in the icy trees was eerie. The only light was the faint glow of the embers, and the glint in both Ilios’s and Brightshow’s eyes. Farden slowly and carefully drew his sword, while Lakkin nocked a thick arrow to his bow. He looked to his dragon and then back to the others. ‘Somebody’s coming. Lots of them by the looks of it,’ he whispered.

  ‘Soldiers?’

  ‘Not sure,’ the rider shook his head. He pointed to the west and they moved off silently into the bushes and trees. Behind them, Ilios leapt into the sky with no more than a faint whisper of feathers.

  Careful to avoid any twigs or sticks that might snap under their weight, the men crept forward, walking on their very tiptoes and keeping their breathing low. They could hear footsteps now, coupled with the occasional pop of an unlucky twig. Somewhere in the dark, a tired cow lowed and a bear snuffled. The three came across a little deer path and crouched behind a screen of bushes. Once Farden’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom, he spotted a procession of huddled figures coming through the trees towards them. They were following the deer path through the loam, and by the sounds of them they were not worried about doing it sneakily. The mage guessed there were about thirty of them in total. There were women in the group, and children too, and they were all lugging packs and bags of varying sizes. They were mumbling amongst themselves, some coughing, others whining, stumbling over fallen trunks and branches and generally making a racket. The noisy rabble couldn’t have been further from an ambush party if they had bells tied around their neck.

  Lakkin made a low whistling sound and the others walked forward to stand in their path. Farden summoned a little light, and they put their weapons away.

  It took a while for the people to notice the three strangers standing in their path, and when they did, they recoiled with surprise and fear. Some of the children ran into the bushes and hid, while the men strode forward brandishing thick staves of oak and pine. One had a rusty sword at his hip. They stood in a line and waved their sticks at the three strange men in a menacing way. They looked at Lakkin with a mixture of fear and confusion, most likely believing him to be some sort of lizard-man of the forest.

  Farden held up a hand. ‘We mean you no harm,’ he said, but they didn’t respond.

  ‘What’s the hold up ‘ere?’ said a thick Albion accent, croaky with age and years of shouting. The wary men moved aside and out of the gloom came an elderly man riding a flea-bitten, and very sleepy, bear. He was balding and rugged-faced, and by the looks of his clothes and skin he was a farmer. He grumbled and clipped one of his men around the ear. ‘What have ye stopped for now?’ asked the man gruffly, but as soon as he saw the men standing on the path he wilted like a dead leaf. ‘What do ye want?’ he gulped, manoeuvring his bear in between the strangers and his men.

  Not wishing to worry them Farden held up his empty hands. ‘We were camping nearby. You can trust us, we don’t want anything from you. We mean you no harm,’ he said in a calm tone.

  ‘Not bandits? Rogues?’

  Farden shook his head.

  The farmer made a strange face and got down from his brown bear. The animal seized the opportunity to have a quick lie down. Farden didn’t blame him; they all looked as though they had been on the road for days. The old man rubbed his grizzly chin. ‘Well what business have ye in the forest tonight? Nobody lives in these parts, ‘cept for the Shrieks,’ he enquired.

  Behind Farden, Durnus coughed as if to stifle a groan. Both of them had heard the old Albion wives-tale. Durnus had books full of them. Shrieks were an Albion myth, a story to make excitable children go to bed, like mermaids, or wights, or huldras. They were supposed to be screeching, tree-dwelling wraiths who offered to tell a man’s fortune for a price, and that price was more often than not a plump peasant child or the soul of the man in question.

  ‘Shrieks?’ asked Farden, humouring the farmer.

  ‘They’re ghosts,’ said one of the men.

  Another quickly spoke up. ‘Oi heard them calling to me, Oi did.’

  The farmer held up a hand. ‘Quiet,’ he ordered. He shrugged apologetically to the three strangers. ‘My boys, full of stories they are. We ‘eard voices in the forest the night before last. Strange little voices, arguin’ and bickerin’, speakin’ of things men aren’t s’posed to ‘ear. Scared the children half t’ death it did, never mind the rest of us.’ He shivered as if recalling something horrible, and then rubbed his hands together. ‘So, what business brings ye to the forest. You ain’t from around here, Oi can tell that much.’ He said this to Lakkin.

  Farden looked to the Siren and then back to the man. ‘No, we’re just passing traders. Heading south to Kiltyrin.’ It was a simple enough excuse. The farmer and his boys exchanged confused looks.

  ‘Traders, are ye? Headin’ to the Bartering, Oi assume, down in Wodehallow?’ he asked. Surely it wasn’t that time already, thought Farden. A glance from Durnus confirmed it just might have been.

  ‘The Bartering, this time of year?’ Farden replied, and the farmer nodded slowly in return.

  ‘Of course, once every summer as usual, not that we get a summer any more mind ye, but tradition is tradition wherever you go. Oi would ‘ave thought ye would have known that… For t
raders, ye don’t know much about tradin’, do ye?’ he said with a suspicious glint in his craggy eyes. But the others weren’t paying attention; this was fortunate news.

  The Bartering happened once a year in the unofficial capital of Albion, a city called Wodehallow that had, for some unknown reason, laid its foundations in the largest and wettest marshland Albion could possible offer. Wodehallow was the oldest city in the country and for one week every summer it played host to the largest marketplace in Albion, so large that even the Dukes gathered together. Clustered together like bats in Wodehallow’s grimy old keep, they would spend the week drinking and bartering themselves into a stupor. Titles and lands would fly back and forth like arrows, gold would rain from the ceiling, and afterwards they would return to their own lands happy and smug, each convinced they had out-swindled the others. Of course, this was never true, but nevertheless this was what the Bartering was, and the three men couldn’t have wished for a better opportunity. All of the Dukes in one place at one time. The gods were smiling after all.

  ‘We forgot,’ mumbled Durnus. The man mused for a second and sniffed.

  ‘Oi see,’ he said, and that was that. ‘Well ye’ve got a long walk on yer ‘ands,’ he said. ‘We’re going south too. The snows are creeping further south every day, and our fields ‘aven’t seen a crop in months now.’ He lowered his voice then, as if sharing a secret that nobody should have heard. ‘Truth be told, there are strange things goin’ on in this world. It’s as if everything’s startin’ to crumble around our ears. There’s war coming, they say, in the east, with that Arka lot. I don’t want my family anywhere near it.’

  Farden understood more than the man could possibly know, but for now he simply nodded and shrugged sympathetically. The farmer sighed, and signalled for his boys and the rest of their group to carry on. The bear looked up with a face full of weary despair. The farmer coughed, patting his bear’s back. ‘Well, Oi’d say ye could come with us but er, truthfully yer a strange-lookin’ lot, and Oi’m not sure if Oi trust the look of ye,’ he said. The three smiled politely. They didn’t blame him. They stood aside as the train of people and baggage squeezed past. It was a procession of nervous and mistrustful looks, of tired and raggedy people, of whispering and pointing children. The bald old farmer swung his leg over his bear and seized its reins. Before he left, he cast a look back in the direction they had come and leant close to whisper another of his secrets. Farden leant him an ear. ‘If Oi were you, which Oi’m glad Oi ain’t,’ he hissed. ‘Oi’d keep an eye out for them Shrieks, and for them tall stones back up the path. They’re not entirely safe, I tell ye. Mark my words. Now gods be with ye, and don’t be following us. Or else.’ And with a flick of the reins and a tired growl the bear and the bald farmer moved off into the night.

  As soon as he had gone, the three men swapped glances. In silent acquiescence they set off up the forest path in single file, curious of these strange stones they were camping so near. As it turned out, the stones were only a short distance away, and they sat right in the middle of the path. It was rather impossible to miss them.

  The granite megaliths stood in a skewed circle twenty paces across at the widest point. They were huge in every sense of the word, almost thirty feet high and as thick as an oak tree, carved square and pointed by someone or something. There were nine of the enormous standing stones, and they seemed as firmly rooted in the earth as the surrounding trees, reaching out of the soil like the fingers of a dead rock troll groping for the sky. Vines and loops of poison ivy criss-crossed their pitted surfaces, shackling the granite with its waxy green ropes. It seemed to be the only living thing that could stand to touch them, for around each of the stones was a grave of shrivelled leaves and the husks of dead insects. Even the snow seemed to have given them a wide berth; there was not a patch of ice or snow to be seen on or near them.

  Fearlessly, Farden walked forward and ran a hand over the nearest one, brushing away some of the ivy so he could touch the stone underneath. He could feel his fingers tingling as he did so. He cast a light spell and squinted at the pockmarked surface of the granite. There were shapes carved into it, shapes that had almost been lost to time and weather. Farden traced one with his finger. There seemed to be others on each of the four sides. ‘Runes,’ he said. The mage beckoned to the vampyre and for a moment, his old friend seemed intrigued. ‘Can you read them?’

  Durnus came forward and traced the same angular shape with one of his nails. He frowned and shook his head. ‘Hmm, no. They’re too degraded,’ he said.

  ‘What are they?’ Lakkin asked, nudging the frozen shell of a long-dead stag beetle with his boot.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Durnus confessed. Farden shrugged. ‘Well, if Durnus doesn’t know then nobody does. I say we should leave them alone. We’ve got better things to do,’ he said, prodding his stone once more. Whatever had made his fingers tingle, he was sure he didn’t like it. Something told him he hadn’t seen the last of these monoliths.

  The three men left the stones to the forest and retraced their steps back to the camp, where they found Ilios and Brightshow waiting for them. It didn’t take Farden and Durnus long to explain the Bartering to the others, and before they could say dragon they were ready and raring to go, not wishing to waste another moment in the cold and dreary forest.

  So, when the red dawn climbed over the eastern horizon and poked its head through the tumbling clouds, the men were already winging their way south towards the marshlands, one on the gryphon, two on the dragon, each with a little hint of hope stirring in their hearts.

  Hope, meanwhile, was the last thing on Cheska’s mind. As was food. No matter what the maids tried or offered she would not eat. Maybe it was the fact she felt constantly sick, maybe it was the thought of her father’s hands grabbing at her skin, or maybe it was the fact every time she thought of her stomach she thought of the baby curled inside of her, and that, for some reason, filled her mind with hatred and nausea.

  Hope was the last thing on Cheska’s mind because her doubt had gnawed away at it until there was nothing left of it that even resembled hope. A hollowed husk of resignation. She sat alone in her rooms, exhausted, and for the second time in as many days, scared to death. The princess spread her hands over her unsettled belly and felt the kick of her unborn child. The bastard hiding in her womb. She clenched her fist. A tightly curled threat.

  Cheska stared at the wooden door of her room, a smaller, starker room than her own quarters, but infinitely better than that dark hole Vice had locked her in. She didn’t need to test the door; she knew it was latched and guarded from the outside, the maids had already reminded her of that. She could hear the bolts and keys turning every time they came and went, waving trays of food in front of her face, tempting her to eat. Others had come to prod and poke her most private places, or massage her pregnant bulge with their cold hands. One maid had even tended her wounds, believe it or not. She had put ointment on her bruised and bloodied scalp, cleaned the dust from her long hair, and in a sweeping moment of insincerity, had dared to ask her if she was “comfortable.” Cheska couldn’t remember the meaning of the world. She had snarled and sent her packing. They were checking in on Vice’s most prized possession, nothing more.

  Cheska felt another kick beneath her hands and winced. She pushed back, as if to teach the little brat a lesson, and it kicked again, harder this time. Pursing her lips she lifted her left hand and held it an inch above from her skin. A single white-blue spark jumped from fingertip to fingertip, investigating the dust beneath her nails, tingling with electricity and magick. Could she? asked the little voice in her head. Would she? No, she told it. Vice would only make her end that much more painful. She tried to remind herself that she was a Written, that she felt no fear, but the little voice was quick to correct her. She was close to drowning in it.

  Something by the door caught her eye then, and mercifully distracted her. Cheska forced herself up and out of her simple bed, and waddled to the door. Instead of re
aching for the handle she turned instead to a wooden cabinet that stood against the wall just to the right of the door, and reached for the little object that lay on top of it.

  It was a little figurine of a goddess, no bigger than the length of her hand, carved out of a dark volcanic stone, smiling benevolently and holding a small, if not misshapen, set of scales. It was a cheap-looking thing. One of the maids must have left it behind. Probably the same maid who had tended her wounds, thought the princess. Cheska sat on the edge of her bed and turned the little figurine over and over in her hands, tracing the folds and dents of the carving with her thumb. There was no mistaking the likeness; it was Evernia, the goddess of wisdom and magick, and for a moment, Cheska was tempted to break the thing in two and smash it against the wall. She could feel the daemon-blood in her veins hissing and spitting at the little goddess, yet for some reason she couldn’t put it down.

  Then, for a reason that would stay hidden in her heart forever, a reason that betrayed her and everything she had ever thought, she clutched the little statue with both hands, closed her eyes, slumped to her bruised and scratched knees, and prayed for the gods to save her.

  Somewhere deep in the icy wilderness, a shadow fell across the gnarled roots and slimy leaves of a pine forest floor. A shadow on a moonless night, with no candle or flame to cast it, but a shadow nonetheless. Above her in the boughs of the oaks, crows huddled together for warmth, sleepy-eyed and murmuring to each other, watching as the ghost passed underneath them and then stopped dead in its tracks. The shadow paused, foot half-raised and ready to fall. She looked around her as if she had heard her name on the breeze. Black velvet sinews twitched as she raised a hand to rub the air between her fingers. She could taste something there. Teeth tugged at soft lips. A faint whisper floated past her ears. She shivered at the feel of it. A thin smile spread across those soft cold lips. When her foot touched the loam again the wet leaves almost bent under her weight…