Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series) (48 page)

Lerel raised an eyebrow. ‘There’s a story in there somewhere.’

Farden shook his head, managing to smile ever-so-slightly. ‘And it’s not for you,’ he said, awkwardly patting her knee. He didn’t know why he made that gesture, but for some reason he did. Lerel didn’t seem to mind. She caught his hand and traced the metal lines of the gauntlet for a moment, testing the limpness of its missing finger before letting it go. She looked up and sighed at the white wastes spread out before them. In the distance, something resembling a snow-trapped forest had appeared, and was growing bigger by the hour.

‘It feels like we’re getting nowhere fast on these ice fields. It reminds me of the dune seas of Paraia.’

‘The calm before the storm,’ replied Farden, and it truly was. It was the itching period between clouds. The insecurity. The trepidation. The preparation. The worry. Farden felt it all. He pushed it all deep inside his mind where he wouldn’t have to think about it, at least for now. Fortunately, it was something he was very good at. His stubbornness had been put to good use.

Lerel ventured a new line of conversation, the one she had been building up to for at least an hour. ‘You’re really going to do it, aren’t you? Going to drag Elessi back from the other side.’

Farden rubbed his eyes, chuckling dryly to himself. ‘Roiks has been talking again, I take it? Or was it somebody else? Maybe it was you who talked to Roiks in the first place…’

‘So, why are you putting it off?’

Farden pursed his frozen lips. ‘I’m not, and I’m struggling to see why everybody thinks I am. We’re heading north this very moment, are we not?’

‘Strange, to go by sled, when there’s a gryphon,’ muttered Loki, eyes shut, head leaning against the canvas of the sled. ‘I thought this was a race?’

‘Shut it,’ Farden warned him.

Loki rubbed his palms together, as if he were the god of sarcasm himself. ‘I am as eager as you are, Farden. You just tell me when, and we’ll go,’ he said. ‘It will be like old times, back in Albion.

Farden turned around to glare at him. ‘What makes you think you’re coming with me?’ he demanded.

‘Aside from one questionable dream, one dalliance with the other side, you have no knowledge of where you’re actually going, do you?’ Loki asked smugly, outlining his ploy, like a glittering hand in a game of cards.

Farden could see what the god was angling for. ‘And you do, I take it.’

‘More than you. I know of the ship. The bridge. You did know about the bridge, didn’t you?’

Farden’s frown couldn’t have got any deeper if it tried. ‘So that’s it, is it? Your grand purpose? Guide of the underworld.’

‘I could think of worse callings.’

‘I’d rather take Heimdall. Shit, I’d rather go by myself.’

‘By all means. Suit yourself. We’ll see what he says,’ Loki said, already on his feet. He nimbly hopped to the back of the sled and jumped to the snow. In the blink of an eye, he was sitting in the sled behind and talking earnestly to Heimdall.

Farden clenched a red-gold fist. ‘That bastard. If only he weren’t a shadow, I could drive something sharp and ugly through him.’

Lerel’s tone was scolding. ‘He’s a
god
, Farden. You should still show some respect.’

‘I don’t show respect to liars,’ replied the mage, shaking his head resolutely.

‘He lied to get you back to Krauslung, or so I heard. Wasn’t that a good thing?’

‘Maybe,’ Farden said, instantly wincing. ‘I mean, yes. It was. Is. Loki just enjoyed it too much for my liking. That god is not like the others. He’s too… human.’ And he stared back at the sled behind, catching the subtlest of subtle glances from Loki as he talked and gestured wildly at Heimdall, while the other god listened, and, irritatingly, seem to be nodding soberly.
Why was Loki so excited, all of a sudden?
Farden thought to himself. Lerel was still waiting for him to finish. ‘I trust him as far as I could throw him. And I can’t throw shadows very far.’

‘Haven’t you got enough enemies? What with Saker, the daemons, and your daughter, I would have thought you’d had your fill.’

‘And what better time than now to come crawling out of the woodwork. Even those we don’t yet know about.’

‘He’s a god, Farden. A god.’

‘And as they say, they’re not perfect.’

Lerel didn’t respond. She simply reached out a hand, rough from the ropes of the
‘Blade
, and rested it in one of his gauntlets. Farden didn’t quite know what to do, so he just stayed still and enjoyed it, listening to the rattling of the sleds, the crackling of the ice, and the snuffling of the odd moles.

Evening fell a rosy pink on the ice. They had almost reached the frozen copse, its tall skinny pines all clad in white and permanent armour of frozen snow, from tip to root. It made them look like a phalanx of faceless knights, silent and dangerous. Frozen rubble poked out from the snow, here and there, dead pennants hanging stiff from forgotten flagpoles. The bones of a long-gone kingdom.

As the tired moles began to slacken in their harnesses, the snowmads reined them in and pulled the sleds into a long line that faced the faraway tree-line, like the shields of a brave little barricade. Farden couldn’t help but notice the imagery.

There was one thing he wasn’t noticing, however, and that was the magick that all the mages were a-whisper about.

‘Bah,’ was all he could say, as he strolled up and down the line of sleds to work some heat back into his feet. Loki’s badgering had already put him in a foul mood, and now this. ‘Bah,’ he said again, watching the steam billow out of his mouth.
Let them whisper.

Apparently one of the Written had singed his tunic, his Book had been burning so bright. Tyrfing had been shaking all day, and not from his fever. Every mile they crept towards the north, towards the giant black mountains on the horizon, the more the magick bit them, the more it ran through their bodies. The more it made the air shiver and the ice glow.

To all of them but Farden.

Even some of the sailors were feeling it. Farden could hear their laughter behind him. He knew exactly what they were up to. Holding their fingers in the fire of a torch and watching the flames slide harmlessly across their hands. Like children and a box of mud-worms. Amateurs.
Lucky. Bloody. Amateurs.

Farden put a bit more anger into his step, and began to stamp his feet instead of placing them. A horrible doubt had appeared in his mind, one that spoke of a legacy of his years of nevermar. A lingering idea of poison, and the terrifying word “permanent” had crept into his mind. It had been different in Albion and Krauslung. His magick had bee the root of his problems. But now that he had decided that he needed it, now that it was needed in the fight to fix those problems, he had finally been granted his wish: to have it banished.

Farden stretched out his hands to the snow lying trodden and trampled around his boot-prints. He stretched his hands out like he used to, fingers slightly bent and clawed. Rigid and tense. He tried to suck the magick from the base of his skull, where he hoped it still lingered. He tried to remember the little room in Krauslung, and his anger. But all that came was a sharp pain and a numb hand.

Farden wiggled his fingers. ‘Screw it,’ he said. He needed a drink to drown his mood.

‘Cheers!’ yelled the entire tent as the mage ducked under its sealskin flap. Farden just smiled weakly at them all, and they drank anyway. One of the Written handed him a cup of something clear and steaming. Worryingly, it had a slight yellowish hue to it. Farden didn’t even want to sniff it.

‘Er…’ he began.

‘Glassmelt,’ said the mage, clanking his cup off Farden’s with a smile. ‘Snowmad’s own recipe.’

‘They have been making it since the sun refused to come up. We should count ourselves lucky. It is not for outsiders,’ rumbled Eyrum from the bar, if it could really be called that. It was a crate barely covered by a cloth, with a three-legged mole curled up around its corner, snoring softly.

Farden pointed at it. ‘Tell me you haven’t got that beast drunk.’

Eyrum shrugged. He wore his axe between his shoulders. Its scarred blade shone in the torchlight. ‘I can neither confirm nor deny,’ he said.

Farden sauntered over to him, wading through the deep and hearty conversations that only strong liquor, excitement, and spare time can nurture. The Written were sprinkled here and there, being surprisingly social for their class. They shared tables with the Sirens. Soldiers sat around in clumps, polishing swords or armour and chatting idly while they worked.

‘We made good progress today,’ Farden said, tapping Eyrum’s cup with his own.

‘Slow but steady.’

‘Wins the race?’

Eyrum shook his head. ‘Must be an Arka fairytale. Ours are different.’

‘How do yours end?’

‘Dragons always win.’

‘Makes sense.’

And so their conversation went. Stabs of humour and dialogue flew back like two fencers parrying and trading blows, circling something more solid and serious at their centre, like a pit filled with sabre-cats, or something, Farden didn’t know. He just knew there was something niggling at his confident clarity. Something beginning to mar it.

‘I could use a smoke,’ Farden said to Eyrum, once their exchange had died a little.

Eyrum dug into his jacket and fished something cracked and battered out of it. Farden squinted at it. Supposedly, it could be called a pipe, if a pipe were something that had survived a hundred battles and a ride down a cliff-face in the back pocket of a heavy, seven-foot tall Siren warrior. Farden fished his own out, a slender little skald’s pipe, and led Eyrum out of the tent.

The difference in volume between the tent and the cold wastes was astounding. It was near-silent outside the sealskin. Around them, the other sleds and their tents sparkled like little islands in the rose-tinted half-dark. A few figures shuffled across the ice, minding their own business. Above, the stars were punching through the tender bruised sky and beginning to twinkle. Farden reached for his tobacco and handed it to Eyrum. The Siren wrinkled his nose. ‘Never liked Arka stuff. Tastes like salt.’

Farden chuckled. ‘Suit yourself. I could say the same of Siren tobacco. What’s it made out of, seaweed?’ he asked.

Eyrum smiled. ‘Not entirely,’ he said. He did a strange thing next. Strange, considering how much time had passed between them, and how habitual the casual movement was. Eyrum finished packing his pipe and offered the bowl to Farden, for him to light. He caught himself halfway there and made it look like an impromptu stretch. ‘Sorry,’ he grunted, sensing how obvious he had been.

‘No need,’ mumbled Farden. ‘Just not the best timing.’ He ducked inside and brought out a whale-tallow candle. The two men held their pipes to it.

Eyrum grunted again. ‘I assume you are speaking of the other mages, and the magick in the air?’ he asked.

‘I am,’ Farden replied between puffs.

‘And I assume you cannot feel it like they can.’

‘Two right so far. Try for third?’

‘And that worries you.’

‘We have a winner.’

‘And here was I believing we came outside to be serious,’ said Eyrum, running his hand over his grizzled face. His grey scales rasped against his rough hands.

Farden sucked his pipe and blew a smoke ring at the stars. ‘We did. My apologies. Heimdall is right. I use humour like armour,’ he replied, with a hint of a sigh.

Eyrum pointed at the twinkling lights above. ‘Do you remember when you and I first looked at the stars?’

Farden nodded. ‘It came back to me the other day. My memories are like that these days. Dribs and drabs. I remembered I pointed out the First Dragon.’

‘That you did.’

Farden clacked the end of his pipe against his teeth. ‘Now I look at them and I wonder which ones I can trust. Which ones are enemies. Which ones are walking amongst us now,’ he wondered, trying to trace a myriad of shapes at once. They all jumbled into one. The stars in the north seemed different somehow, brighter, closer. He abruptly blinked his way out his reverie. ‘Speaking of stars, where’s Loki?’ he asked.

“Even daemons like to barter.”