Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series) (10 page)

‘That’s enough, you two!’ Gossfring warned. He could see the shining lights under Inwick’s tunic as she ducked and danced. He was about to step in when she aimed a huge downward strike at Farden. He hopped back as the blade hit the deck and showered sparks over Loki and Timeon. Farden didn’t bat an eyelid. He put his foot on Inwick’s blade and kicked with the other, nearly snapping her wrist as he kicked her hands free of its handle. He slowly and gently lowered his sword, now notched and bitten, to rest on her neck. She flinched as if it were hot.

‘Best of three?’ he whispered, offering a hand. To his surprise, Inwick grasped it. She didn’t say a word, she simply shook her head and went to stand by Gossfring.

‘Maybe we’ll practise again later,’ he said, with a surreptitious nod of approval to Farden. As he led the slightly bemused Inwick away, she could be heard whispering.

‘I thought you said he was half the man he used to be?’ An elbow in the ribs silenced any more of that conversation.

With a smattering of applause, Farden sauntered to a clear section of deck and began to practise his old sword forms, twirling his battered blade in all sorts of cartwheels and somersaults. He was a blur. A tired, and shaky blur, but a blur nonetheless. Something fresh ran through his veins.

‘There’s the old Farden,’ smiled Tyrfing, watching his nephew.

‘Yes,’ hummed Loki, distracted. ‘The old Farden indeed.’ He was busy patting the smouldering patches on his cloak where Inwick’s sparks had fallen. All around his feet and legs, little black cinders hissed and died.

Afternoon fell, swiftly chased by evening, and soon they were both nipping at the heels of the sun as it drowned in the blackness of the horizon. Nuka had driven the
Waveblade
and her crew hard throughout the rest of the day, barking orders and laying about with stiff ropes. As night fell, the ship was clearing the Rannoch Sound, a section of sea below the curving claw of Albion’s northeastern limits. Nelska and Hjaussfen lay due north, and the
Waveblade
sped towards them both.

Evening found Tyrfing in his modest cabin, surrounded by his armour and other shiny objects. A brace of axes lay up against his bed. A shield lay in complex pieces on the cabinet behind him, surrounded by little tools and implements. The Arkmage ignored them all. He was at his desk, poring over a book, and no ordinary book for that matter. The fringes of its thick pages were a bloodshot red, while the paper itself was a pale, wan green. The colour of seasickness, or sun-kissed lichen. Its cover was made of thick copper, bound in brown leather.

Merchants had an unofficial rule:
if something was heavy, then it was worth a pretty penny.
This book fitted that rule. It weighed half as much as a desk, and it had cost more than a few pouches of gold. And yet, the strangest thing about it was that it was completely, utterly blank. There was not a scribble to be found in any of the pages. Not yet, anyway.

Untouched and uninked, the green pages were spread open before him. Tyrfing’s quill hesitated above them, waiting for something. A single droplet of black ink quivered at the nib of the quill, hovering, ready to go to work. It didn’t have long to wait.

As Tyrfing stared down at the empty page, a line of thin script began to scratch its way across it, as if scrawled by some ghost wielding an invisible quill. Tyrfing didn’t look the least bit shocked. He waited patiently for the phantom scribbler to finish his words before reading, lips mouthing them.

Tyrfing, all is seemingly well here. Malvus Is still waiting to close the jaws of his plan. The city is tense. The bodies have been buried and the mess of battle cleared away. How fares the voyage?

D

Tyrfing touched his quill to the page, under where the last message had finished. As he wrote, the ink vanished the moment it touched the paper, as though the quill was bone dry. Tyrfing had to concentrate hard on his imaginary letters:

As quickly as possible. She is impossibly fast. Nuka tells me we should arrive by morning. Farden continues to be positive. It’s almost as if a new farden fell with the daemons. how is Elessi?

T

And so the strange conversation went.

Elessi is still mocking death. Modren has grown even more desperate. He strangled one of the healers today. the Jeasin woman managed to calm him down before the poor man had the life squeezed out of him. We need to heal Elessi, and quickly. If we do not, I fear we shall lose both of them.

D

And of the hawks we sent to towerdawn?

T

No word from the dragons, or of
her
either. She has gone north, I know it. To either the Scattered Kingdoms or the ice fields. Gods only know why. Maybe to summon an army where we cannot reach her.

D

That worries me deeply. We have to catch her, before it is too late.

T

That I leave to you, Farden, and the others. I have every faith In you.

D

In the privacy of his cabin, Tyrfing winced. His quill bent to the page once again.

Sometimes I wonder where this endless faith comes from. Perhaps it’s a Nefalim thing. It’s misplaced, friend. I’m not what I used to be. You know that better than anybody. We need more time, more Men, ships, Dragons. Anything…

T

It is a faith well-founded, old friend, in experience and trust. You are more than capable. As are the mages. Until you get to Nelska, You and the crew of that ship are all that stands in her way. If you cannot succeed, then nobody can, and we may as well wave the white banner now, and pray that my father orion and his ilk will show us what little mercy they have…

There was a pause in the phantom scribbling. Tyrfing went to reply, but realised Durnus hadn’t signed his initial. Perhaps he was fetching more ink. Tyrfing used the pause to wonder how in Emaneska a blind man could write so legibly. He must have been using one of the trusted servants to read for him. Brave, considering Malvus’ deep pockets. Not that he had a choice.

Soon enough, Durnus’ scribbling began again, hesitant this time, unsure. Broaching a wounded subject.

…Have you told him yet?

D

Once again, another wince. Tyrfing put down his quill and rifled through his grey hair with sweaty fingers. In was in that uncomfortable moment that there came a rap at the door. Tyrfing quickly scribbled a large and underlined
NO
. on the page and then quickly flipped to an empty page, knowing full well Durnus’ sibling book would flip too.

‘Come,’ Tyrfing called, and in walked Farden, fresh from walking around the deck, by the looks of his ruffled hair.

‘Are we going to the captain’s table, or not?’ he asked quietly. There seemed to be a slight hint of dread in his voice, almost as if the last two words were two shaky fingers clinging to an escape ladder.

‘Yes, we are. One minute,’ replied Tyrfing, waving for his nephew to enter. Farden sagged a little and shut the door behind him. ‘I’m talking to Durnus.’

Farden looked around, befuddled. ‘How?’

‘Using an Inkweld.’

‘Inkwhat?’

‘Weld.’

‘Well what?’

Tyrfing rubbed his furrowed brow. ‘Just come and see, you infuriating bastard.’

Farden did as he was told and wandered over to the desk. His hands were deep in his pockets, sullen like the rest of him. ‘It’s blank,’ he said. ‘And green.’

‘Watch,’ Tyrfing muttered, dabbing his quill in the nearby pot of ink. As he wrote Durnus’ name and the fact that a certain nephew was now in the cabin, Farden leant close to watch the ink sink into the paper. It left no trace save for the fine scraping of the quill’s nib. For a moment nothing happened, and then a line of script wrote itself across the page.

Just as I was retiring too. We shall talk more soon. Farden, your Uncle will fill you in on ElessI. Goodnight, gentlemen.

D

Farden had to admit he was impressed. He even found himself waving goodbye to the open book, and the distant Durnus, as if it were a scrying mirror. ‘Very useful. Though I imagine a few hawk-pedlars will be irked by being put out of business.’

‘This and its partner are the only ones I’ve ever seen, and they cost a pretty pouch of gold.’

‘How much exactly?’

‘None of your business. Privileged Arkmage information.’

‘Worth it?’

‘I’m not outside in the cold waiting for a hawk, am I?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘To dinner then, and enough of this conversation.’

Farden nodded, trying to hide his reticence to follow his uncle out of the cabin. Dinner meant people. People meant conversation. Conversation meant Farden having to respond. All Farden wanted to do at that precise moment was curl up into a tight ball and let sleep kidnap him. He was tired from a long day of practice. His body was on fire again but this time it had a glimmer of the good sort about it. Of muscles worked to aching. Of blood and body ridding itself of old poisons. The only blessing about the very mention of dinner was that it carried the prospect of food. Now that, Farden did want to partake of.

Before they entered the Captain’s cabin, Tyrfing slung a look over his shoulder and tutted. ‘Put a smile on your face, Farden. Your gloomy expression won’t make this ship go any faster,’ he said, finishing his reprimand with a harsh cough.

Farden tried anyway.

Roiks was deep in the midst of a story when they sidled into the captain’s cabin. He had his hands raised, as if the punch line was a cudgel he was about to slam into the table.

‘… and then, right, Sheps comes down the tavern stairs all sheepish like, with an eye as dark and as hollow as a whirlpool at night. Got a trickle of blood from his nose too, right down to his lip. So I says to him, “Sheps! Why the shiner, lad? Didn’t she take kindly to a fine bit of sailor?” ’

Roiks paused to stifle a snicker of laughter. The others around him had heard this story before and yet they were still chortling behind loaded forks and calloused hands. Stories like that are like fine wines; they get better with age and air.

‘So then Sheps pauses at the bottom of the stair, all frosty-eyed, like I just pissed on his leg. Then, all of a sudden, he cracks a smile, bloodied as it is, and begins to laugh. “Boys!” he announces, all proud and beamy, “let’s just say that fine maiden was more of a sailor than I!” ’

Roiks slapped the table then, sending his beaker tottering around his plate. The two nearest him began to guffaw with laughter. ‘Turns out the maiden that ole Sheps caught winking at him was naught other than a rather comely-looking blacksmith’s ‘prentice from Manesmark, and had a twitch of his eye no less, from the sparks and the soot, see? So imagine this poor lad’s surprise, when he begins to get tired, already cursed with a feminine face, and in a manly sort of profession to boot, been a long day at the forge-fire, his eye is causin’ him trouble, some sailor leering at him all night, he takes a wander up to his two-copper room for the night, snuffs the lantern, beds down, all comfy-like, only to suddenly find slithery ole Sheps sashayin’ into his very bedroom, pants already half ‘round his ankles, cock happy as a flagpole, and gibbering on about sending his vessel deep into port! He was lucky to only get a black eye and a bloodied nose by my reckoning!’

The cabin crumpled into a wheezing, teary-eyed mess of laughter and smattered applause. Nuka was doubled up and red-faced. The rest of the crew were much the same. Even Lerel was in the tight grip of hysterics, coughing and spluttering, being the only one unfortunate enough to have boldly taken a mouthful of her supper right on the cusp of the punchline. Roiks laughed the hardest and longest, banging the butt-end of his knife against the fine tabletop over and over again, mouth wide and cackling, chest heaving with strangled air.

‘Dear me,’ gasped Nuka, face red. He turned around to the two men standing beside the door, smiles straying onto their lips. Even Farden’s. He quickly got to his feet in the presence of Tyrfing. As did every other man and woman at the table. ‘Please, Arkmage, Farden, sit.’ The captain gestured to a brace of empty chairs that sat on opposite sides of his table.

The company at the table was comprised of the
Waveblade
’s officers. The first mate was a narrow man with a wine-reddened face and plenty of grin to share in his spade-like face. Hasterkin was his name. He was bald save for a stripe of red hair around the back of his skull. The second mate was of course Lerel, dressed in a smart shirt and ship’s trousers. She had wine in her cheeks too, and gave Farden a knowing smile as he sat down in the midst of the group. He hadn’t bothered to take off his cloak.