Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series) (17 page)

Another mighty cheer went up from the council then, accompanied by an eager rattle of applause and back-clapping. Malvus turned and strode purposefully towards Evenia’s statue. With a heave, he seized the old warhammer and swung it onto his shoulder. He marched into the crowd and they parted like water before a sharp keel. Hands patted him on the shoulders as he walked by. Laughing words of congratulations swirled in his wake. Malvus didn’t say a word to any of them.

When the crowd fell silent, Malvus stood in front of the twin thrones, so still he seemed frozen to the marble. Several minutes he stood there, as the whispers began to build yet again. One man stepped forward, peeling away from the crowd, and raised a curious finger.

‘Malvus?’ he asked. ‘Are you…?’ His question trailed off as Malvus began to move. He raised his hammer high into the air, as high as his arms could reach. It teetered for a moment, clasped by white, stretching fingers, and then it was brought down with an ear-splitting crack, colliding with the very centre of the twin thrones. A half-shocked gasp went up from the council. The rest flinched at the noise and watched, wide-eyed, as Malvus brought the hammer down and down again, in great furious swings. Marble chips and milk-white dust flew like sea-spray. The guards ran forward and then floundered in hesitation, unsure if this was a step of treachery too far. None dared stray into the arc of the swinging hammer. Malvus was sweating now, somehow speeding up, not slowing down. The hammer-blows rained as though he were a seasoned blacksmith. The tendons stood out on his rolled-up forearms like cords. He grunted and hissed with every strike, grinning through the dust, a rabid dog.

Within minutes, one half of the twin thrones was a battered, obliterated mess. It lay on the floor in chips and chunks, a mound of featureless disarray. Unmatched craftsmanship, smashed and scarred to nothing. Panting, Malvus paused for a second to admire his work, and then with one last swing, he split the nearby Underthrone in half. Its broken back fell onto the floor, spitting marble as it split again. The warhammer fell with it, cast aside with a loud clang and left to wallow in its own destruction.

The council watched with wide eyes as Malvus took to the scarred steps of the remaining throne. He took his time, nudging broken marble aside with his toes as he took each glorious step. Had he been facing the council, they would have seen a smile on his face so wide that they would have feared for the safety of his cheeks. Then, at the summit, with a clap and a rub of dusty hands, Malvus Barkhart turned and slowly sank into the seat of the throne. Many years abruptly culminated into that one act of gravity. His heart thumped.

All was achingly silent in the great hall. Malvus stared straight ahead, waiting, drumming his dusty, marble-bitten nails. Then, one by one, the council began to drop to its knees. Malvus’ smile got even wider. ‘Ring the bells!’ he ordered, with a laugh. ‘Ring every bell! Let the city know what it has done today!’
What I’ve done today
, though this was to himself.

“No better guise than a shapeshifter’s hide.”

Latter section of an Albion parable

H
jaussfen was an exercise in darkness. Darkness, and a stench only a rat could savour. The mountain fortress was as quiet as a graveyard, and in more than one place, it played the same role.

The precarious stairs had delivered them straight into the windowless bowels of the mountain. It was pitch black save for the occasional stubborn torch. It was a mercy in a way. There had been fighting there. The vicious sort. The fruits of it lay sprawled and twisted in corners. The darkness did its best to give the corpses an inkling of respect. Whatever had happened to the mountain, it had happened quickly and brutally. It sparked fresh prickles of worry and fury in Tyrfing and Farden.

The mages crept between storerooms and servants’ quarters, steam-starved baths and abandoned guard posts. The long stairs had taken their toll on Farden’s legs and now he had fallen behind Tyrfing. He didn’t seem to mind; the Arkmage was like a master thief, thoroughly in his element, tiptoeing back and forth, darting and probing. He let his magick flow into both light and shadow, illuminating the darker paths, but wrapping himself in shadow at every corner and junction. The spells flowed out of him like wine from a skin. It was effortless to watch, but irksome too. Farden scrunched up his face more than once. He tried a spell, just once, out of curiosity, but his body still wasn’t ready. The magick stung him, a blinding headache came and went, and so he left well enough alone.

To the untrained eye, the deep reaches of the mountain fortress might have seemed bloody, but abandoned. The guard on the stairs had proven to them otherwise. As did the occasional echo of voices or footsteps, the smattering of fresh crumbs by a bench, or the drag-marks of some bloody altercation, still tacky to the touch.

‘This is making my blood boil,’ hissed Farden, as they passed a figure curled around a splintered door-frame, displaying the sort of disturbing stillness that only a corpse can. The mage’s voice sounded foreign in the silence.

Tyrfing nodded as he peeked around a corner. His blood had been boiling since the beach. ‘Stairs,’ he breathed.

‘What?’

‘Stairs. They’ll take us up.’

Farden felt strong enough to take the lead. His sword was out and low, barely grazing the granite floor. Tyrfing strode behind him, hands out, dangerous.

As they set foot to the wide, simple stairs, they heard an echo murmur to them. Something from the levels above, like the rustling of a great tree, or a giant snake shuffling along. Uncertainty was a painful thing, in moments like that. It made the breath catch at the back of the throat. Tyrfing stifled another cough as Farden moved on ahead.

The source of the murmuring was soon discovered: Feet. Hundreds of barely-covered feet walking in a silent line. The mages watched them from the top of the stairs, down the length of a long corridor, dark except for its distant end, where shadows and their owners shambled along in droves. Soldiers, their armour and mail glinting, telltale, in the torches they carried, marched alongside them. Even at that distance, the mages could see them shoving and pushing their captives along.

‘Reminds me of a Krauslung we liberated, a long time ago,’ muttered Farden.

‘At least we have no Vice to fight.’

‘No, just the entirety of the Lost Clans.’

Tyrfing shrugged as if that truly didn’t worry him. ‘Let’s go.’

Go they did. As quietly as their boots and armour would allow, the two mages sprinted down the corridor as the tail of the train of captives passed by. Two soldiers were bringing up the rear. By the time they felt cold, metallic hands and a blade slide across their throats, it was already too late for them. Once their cloaks and helmets had been pilfered, they were quickly and quietly stowed in a dark doorway. Their comrades were too busy haranguing the captives to notice.

Tyrfing and Farden donned the helmets and slung the cloaks over their shoulders. While Tyrfing kept a wary eye on the soldiers up ahead, Farden reached out to gently grab the skinny arm of the rearmost captive in the sorry line, an older man with a long waterfall of silver-blonde hair. Gentle Farden may have been, but the man still yelped like a stung hound.

‘Shhh!’ Farden hissed as quietly as he could. Tyrfing ducked as one the soldiers looked back down the line.

‘I’m sorry,’ gasped the poor man, screwing his eyes shut. ‘Whatever it is, don’t hurt me!’

‘Pipe down,’ Farden whispered in his ear. The mage shook him lightly, and gradually the man cracked open his eyes. There was no fist hovering above him, no blade tickling his chin, just a man with a face from the mainland, an Arka man by his paleness. The helmet only covered his brow and his cheeks. It was plain even in the tepid torchlight. The Siren’s eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to accommodate the enormous smile that was spreading across it.

‘Thank Thr…!’ he cried, too loud for comfort. The mages winced. Farden clapped a hand over the man’s mouth and shoved him back into the line. The other Sirens around them were none the wiser. They glanced fearfully over their shoulders. All they saw were two soldiers in helmets; the light was too bad and their hatred too strong to notice any different.

The soldiers, however, had heard the noise over the shuffling, murmuring procession of feet. One of them broke off and stood aside, waiting for the line to work its way past him. Farden saw the figure lingering ahead, passing time by whacking random captives with the flat of his sword blade. There were bars of steel riveted to the mail on his shoulders. Some sort of rank.

Farden’s chest tightened under the pressure of the distinct lack of options. The corridor was doorless, windowless, and straight. He leant close to his uncle, eyes still on the soldier ahead. ‘Erm,’ he began.

‘Hold tight,’ came the order.

Farden frowned. ‘Hold tight to w…’ Tyrfing clamped a hand on his shoulder and a searing pain delved into his body, making his face convulse and his arms shake.

‘Stay still. Keep walking,’ Tyrfing hissed in his ear. It was all Farden could do to nod and not cry out. As the soldier drew near, the pain faded just enough to allow him to stop gurning. He kept his mouth shut and his hands clamped around his sword, waiting for the inevitable havoc to unfold, as it surely would.

It would have been a sore understatement to say Farden was a touch surprised when the soldier fell in alongside them, calm as a cobble. Farden kept his head forward, looking instead with his eyes, straining so much they ached. Tyrfing’s hand was still gasping his shoulder in a grip that a troll would have been proud of. Tyrfing’s armour had completely faded in colour. In fact, it didn’t even seem to be the same armour any more. It was a pale shirt of dirty mail, complete with a tabard bearing the device of some clan. Farden flicked his eyes down at his own attire and found he was wearing the same. His Scalussen armour had completely disappeared. Farden wiggled his left hand into view and saw that it was scaled, and grey. Despite the pain, Farden smirked to himself as he recited a bit of Albion nonsense in his head.
No better guise than a shapeshifter’s hide
.

‘Giving you trouble?’ asked the Lost Clan soldier, aiming a kick at a nearby captive. His accent was thicker than the ice he hailed from. So thick it was almost another language. Unperturbed, Tyrfing took a breath, and replied in an accent every bit as thick. Farden had to hold himself from laughing with joy.

‘Not a bit, sir. Not a bit,’ grunted his uncle.

‘Make sure you keep it that way. Don’t want a riot on our hands.’

‘No sir.’

From the corner of Farden’s eye, he could see the soldier lean past Farden to examine him. He nodded but kept his eyes straight.

‘New recruit?’ he asked Tyrfing, noting the hand on the shoulder.

The Arkmage nodded quickly. ‘Green as they come. Too many bodies for one day,’ he said.

‘Hmm, blood-sick. We all got it at some point, didn’t we?’ hummed the soldier. ‘Well,’ he said, talking to Farden. ‘You toughen up, you hear? We don’t want any pale-scales making liabilities of themselves.’

‘No sir,’ Farden replied, as loudly and as boldly as he could. The pain strangled his voice.

He heard the soldier nudge Tyrfing before he left. ‘He’ll soon get used to it. After what I hear Lord Saker has planned.’

The name was a ricochet of an arrow, bouncing around the inside of Farden’s skull.
Saker
. There it was: the name that had been tickling his memory for the past few hours.
Saker
.

‘Oh yes?’ Tyrfing asked, but the soldier was already walking back down the shuffling line, tapping his scaled nose.

‘Oho yes,’ he chuckled, and that was that. ‘You keep these ingrates in line, you hear?’

‘Yes sir,’ chorused the mages.

Once the soldier was out of eye and earshot, Tyrfing dragged his hand from Farden’s shoulder. Farden felt a strange weight lift as normality came flooding back into his body. It wasn’t without its own brand of pain. It was like having a sword pulled out once it had been driven in. Both hurt, each in different, sickening ways. Farden wheezed as he watched his grey hands fade back to red and gold. He could feel his face contorting and shedding its scales. Farden wiped a drip of sweat from his brow with a shaky hand.

‘Does it feel like that every time?’ he gasped as the final dregs of pain evaporated.

Tyrfing shook his head in a nonchalant sort of way. ‘You get used to it.’

Farden didn’t bother asking how. He tapped the captive Siren on the shoulder and the man slowed his pace. He was wise enough to remain calm this time, and facing forward.

‘Who in the name of Thron are you?’

‘Passers-by,’ said Tyrfing.

‘We came to speak with the Old Dragon,’ Farden replied.

The Siren snorted. It was a cold sound, hard as flint. ‘Then I wish you the very best of luck.’

‘Why?’

‘Last I heard, he was being held in the great hall. We haven’t seen him in a week. They say Saker and his Fellgrin killed him.’

‘Why? What happened here?’

The Siren shrugged. ‘I’m just a cook. What should I know of the whys and hows? One day was normal. The next, the Lost Clans are at our gates, begging for sanctuary against the snows and the ice. Towerdawn gave them the shelter of the lower slopes. Gave them grain, breads, water. Before we knew it, they had taken the mountain for themselves.’

‘But why? You must know.’

‘I told you, I’m a cook, not a soldier. And that has kept me safe so far, so I’m not going to start acting like one, if that’s what you’ve come for.’

Tyrfing leant forward. ‘What are they doing with you?’

‘They march us back and forth. Make us work the kitchens.’ The Siren shrugged. ‘If you ask me, not much has changed.’

Farden put his hand on the back of the man’s head and twisted it sharply to the left, where a man’s broken body lay in a doorway, a twisted picture of death. A smear of something brown and flaking painted the door behind him. ‘Save for the hazardous working conditions…?’ Farden whispered.