Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series) (65 page)

Regards,

Kospregr.”

Extract from a report to the Undermage, from Sergeant Kospregr, of the School of the Written

‘I
 feel sorry for her, y’know,’ said the woman. She had a soft, fair face, with a birth-mark spread like a splatter of jam across her temple and forehead. ‘Poor lamb.’

‘Hasn’t got much of a chance. Not out here. Should have taken her back to the ship. Who is she, anyway?’ asked the other. She was quite the opposite in appearance. She had an axe-head of a face. Blunt and severe. Her lips looked to be having a contest of how close they could get to her nose.

The first woman rolled her eyes. The two healers were huddled around a candle on the bedside and like the woman on the bed they had drowned themselves in blankets to keep the cold at bay. They shivered all the same. ‘I told you, it’s the Undermage’s wife. Poor lamb. Struck down on her wedding day too.’

‘Her? How’d you know?’

‘Cook told me.’

‘Cook tells more lies than, than…’ the second woman’s lips twitched, flinging themselves at her nose in a wild effort. ‘…Than is right for one man to tell. Ship’s full of ‘is rumours.’ She leant close and watched their patient’s chest for any signs of movements. She squinted. It was hard to tell if there were any. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was already dead.’

‘Nonsense.
Daemontouched
they said. Coma.’

‘Daemonrubbish.’

‘His Mage’s own words.’

‘If we were back on the ship…’

‘Oh, here we go…’

‘…If we were back on the ship, with a proper bed and a proper light, I might actually be able to do some medicinal good to this woman. Not sittin’ here watching her freeze to death. Here, in this rabbit-hutch of a sled? On this ice? We’re useless, we are. She hasn’t got a chance. And who’s going to explain to the Undermage, when he gets back? Hmm? Not me.
If
he gets back, that is. Then we’ll be in hot water. We might as well have stayed with the ship. And another thing… BLEEDIN’ NJORD!’

Two panicked screams split the air as the half-dead woman on the bed sat bolt upright. The two healers fell to the floor and scrabbled under a table. The severe-looking one reached for a butter knife, the other for a pillow to cover her eyes.

‘She’s awake!’

‘She’s possessed!’

Elessi retched and rasped. She flailed about like a mad thing, sending blankets flying all over the place. ‘Far…den!’ she choked.

‘Farden?’ cried the healers in unison.

Elessi turned around, eyes bloodshot crimson and wild with bewilderment. ‘He’s coming!’

Something was licking him. That was for sure. There was no other sensation like it. A wet slab of warm meat sliding and rasping across his skin, mingled with the feel of escaped breath, then a trail of cold following in its wake as the wet cooled in the icy air. A tongue. It had to be.

Farden opened his bleary eyes to find he was absolutely right. He just hadn’t expected what sort of tongue, and the creature that owned it. He couldn’t help but jump. He nearly made it to his feet, he flew up so fast. Instead he sank back on his knees, and watched the huge whale slide further onto the ice, rearing up out of its narrow waterway. Farden wiped his wet, slimy cheek, and pulled a polite smile.

‘Where?’ he began to ask, then his smile fell. His body sagged with it. Ice. Whales. Water. He was in the north alright, but days from the battle. That cursed Hel and her bastard ship. Farden put his fist in the snow, listening to it sizzle.

Then he heard it. That far off roar that could have been taken for a storm. But it wasn’t, not to his seasoned ear. It was too sharp, too metallic. It was the unmistakable roar of battle.

Farden’s head snapped north. There, cradled in a broken notch of the gigantic, blackened mountains, was a cloud of smoke and ash, its insides roiling with kaleidoscopic hues. Red turned to yellow, turned to blue, turned to green. The noise of it deafened even the flaming fury of the mountains and volcanos at its back. Farden watched as two bright, shining stars fell from the sky and dove straight into the haze. They exploded somewhere in its depths. Even at that distance the snow shook.

It was then that Farden spied his daughter on the hill, just on the cusp of the chaos. He could feel her too. Finally he understood. Shaking, trembling, the air was alive with her magick. It rose and fell for miles around like winter waves crashing on a snowy shore. Farden felt his head pound as he squinted at her. She was a bright star on a black hill, wrapped in fire and magick. His daughter. The paragon of magick. Apotheosis of power. Samara.

Farden got to his feet, shaking. He snarled. She would die like the rest of them.

‘Ice is cracking,’ hummed the whale, licking its dagger teeth. Its obsidian skin glistened in the dawn light.

‘What?’

‘Ice.’ The whale slapped his flipper. ‘Cracking.’

‘Er…’

‘We ride with it.’

Farden really wasn’t getting the picture. ‘Ride with what? Where?’

The whale waggled its fin as it slid back into the water. Farden could see dark shapes sliding along underneath, deep in the sapphire water. He suppressed a shiver. ‘Into battle. Cracks are running under the mountains. Sea bubbles up. We fight.’

‘Now?’

‘Now! You ride with us.’

Farden slammed down his visor. Gods, he loved the feel of that. ‘One question. How?’

The whale leant to the side so that his tall fin nearly knocked Farden in the face. ‘I swim. You ride.’

Farden lifted up his visor again. ‘I what?’

Samara shuddered. Not with fear, not with revulsion. She simply shook. Her body was failing. She could feel it. The sky was nearly emptied. Only a few dozen now remained, but only one could be next. It was time. She could feel him darkening the sky already, feel him pressing his mind into hers, commanding her, crushing her. Samara winced as she reached for him. It was his turn now.

Orion.

Samara’s knees had long since failed her. She was now collapsed on her side, foetus-like in her black bowl of charred, splintered rock. The fire still spun, and the wind still howled.
Only a few dozen left
, she told herself for the tenth time in the last minute. Her eyelids felt as though they were made from hot lead. The feeling of triumph and power she had felt barely an hour ago had now all but vanished, burnt away by the searing, bubbling pain that wracked her body. She could still feel Lilith’s worried eyes on the back of her scorched neck.
Only a few dozen left, then I rest, and ride on their shoulders.

And she pulled. She pulled with all the might she had left to spare. Her arms were near ripped clean of their sockets when her spell found him. He seized her with iron claws like anchor flukes. Samara cried out as her shoulders inched further. She bit down on the magick and the spell bit back. Something snapped in her back, as the daemon came loose, prized from the void above.

She slumped into her hole, almost letting the spell cave in on her as she watched Orion light up the sky above. Hokus’ ugly head appeared over the stone, a mask of teeth and blood that wasn’t his. ‘He is coming,’ he veritably cheered. Samara nodded weakly. ‘You have served your purpose well, child,’ he grinned, turning to yell and roar at any of his brethren that could hear him. ‘HE IS COMING!’

‘Who’s coming, brother?’ Valefor looked up from picking the purple entrails from his claws. The two were acting like foremen, directing their bloody workers with roars, shouts, and slashes from their claws and nails. Theirs was a most gratifying job. From their little fire-smeared and blood-splashed pedestal they could watch their brothers and sisters falling from the sky with grins and welcoming arms; they could crush anything that dared come near enough to take a swipe at them; they could taste the roars, the screams, the destruction. It was what they had dreamt of for centuries. Salivated at in the darkness. Music to their stubby ears.

They had even dabbled in some fighting too. Their spoils lay spread across the rocks below. Two dragons, a bear, and countless little four-limbed insects. But it hadn’t been all fun and games. Valefor had a chunk missing from his side. His left foot had been smashed by a big dragon-rider with an axe. Hokus was missing several claws and had a lightning burn across his chest from Durnus. The mages had struck early and viciously, but with every daemon that fell, they had been forced back into the smoke. Valefor and Hokus were enjoying themselves immensely.

‘Who do you think, brother Valefor?’

‘Our glorious king?’

‘The very same.’

Valefor clapped his claws and raised them to the sky. Sure enough, there he was, hovering in the dawn-lit firmament, teetering like the jewel of a broken pendant, already beginning to fall. He would be there very soon indeed. ‘He will be most pleased that we have left some for him. The Old Dragon, perhaps, should be kept for him. Ruin too, as he ordered.’

‘Insects,’ Hokus growled. A fireball flew out of the smoke and clattered against the rocks behind them. They heard a distant squeal from Lilith. ‘They never stood a chance.’

Valefor giggled as he watched another clump of mages shuffle out of the smog at the foot of the hill, accompanied by a lithe black dragon. ‘If you’ll excuse me, brother.’

Hokus flashed his fangs, but waggled a claw. ‘Over-confidence is dangerous, brother.’

‘I’ll remind them of that, before I sever their heads,’ Valefor snarled over his shoulder, flexing his smoking wings.

Shivertread let the carcass of the huge wolf slide from his jaws and drop to the snow. The fetid creature hissed as its last breath escaped from its lungs.

‘We should fall back,’ hissed the dragon, fearfully. All around them, hulking shadows battled with pockets of resistance and bravery. There were too many to count.

‘We should keep going, dragon,’ Modren snapped, pushing Durnus on. ‘We’re close! We kill her and we may just have a chance!’

Modren was right. No sooner had he spoken than they emerged from the blinding smoke at the foot of the hill, where the black rocks rose out of the dirty snow, rising up to join the mountains. ‘There!’ the Undermage cried.

Durnus could see her now. He squinted at the bright, fiery spot in his blind darkness. It was Samara, slumped in the broken stone. Was she dead? His heart rose and fell in a moment, hope dashed on the rocks. He could still feel her spell shaking the air. He could still hear its roar over the noise of battle and the volcano.