Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series) (45 page)

‘Councils Bort and Anviss request your immediate presence,’ blurted the skinny boy.

‘What ever for?’ Malvus frowned.

‘Somebody is arriving in the city. A mage they said. A Written. Arkmage Tyrfing’s nephew.’

Malvus’ smile faded.

Tyrfing barely heard the shouting over his vicious hammer-blows. When he turned around, he found Durnus standing in the doorway of the forge. He was beckoning to him with one hand and holding a fresh Arkmage’s robe with the other.

Tyrfing wiped his soot and sweat-stained brow. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

Durnus didn’t have to say anything at all. His look spoke for him. As did his grin. Tyrfing threw the hammer and the ingot he had been battering to the floor and darted for the door.

‘And that’s how it’s done, you bunch of ingrates! Off to the water trough with you, before you vomit over my nice, clean training ground! Dismissed!’ Sergeant Toskig yelled.

The recruits could barely raise their arms to salute Toskig and the Undermage. Rank by sweaty, exhausted rank, they shuffled off towards the low building at the end of the training yard. Some of them were bleeding from several cuts, others had fresh, blossoming bruises to nurse. Others looked like the walking dead.

Toskig clapped the Undermage on the back as he picked up his cape. Even he was sweating. ‘Maybe I’ll come back again tomorrow.’

‘We may need all the help we can get, but you, sir, have got a wedding to attend.’

Modren smiled. ‘That I do, Sergeant. You are invited, you know?’

‘It would be an honour, sir, but these recruits…’ he trailed off. Modren understood. Toskig was a good soldier and an even better instructor.

‘We’ll save you some boar, then,’ Modren said, fastening the straps of his vambraces with his teeth.

‘Ale would be better, your Mage.’

Modren was caught mid-laugh as a red-faced messenger darted across the training yard and skidded to a halt. He barely saluted before the words came tumbling out of his mouth. ‘Undermage Modren, sir, he’s back.’

Modren crossed his arms and furrowed his brow. ‘Who’s back?’

The messenger looked confused. ‘Arkmage Durnus said you’d understand…?’

The realisation struck like a sling-stone.

Heimdall rubbed his eyes and looked again. He had never needed to look twice before, not in all his uncountable years, but now he was doing exactly that.

It was absolutely unmistakable. The gryphon swung low over the matchstick masts of the port and then climbed into the air with several huge beats of his wings. Heimdall could already hear the screams in the streets as Ilios skimmed the chimneys and rooftops.

Heimdall could already pick out the fair face of a young god, and the bloodied, gaunt face of another sitting behind him, stubbornly refusing to hang on. His arms were crossed tightly.

It could be no other.

‘Verix…’ he began, but she was already moving.

‘I’ll get the Arkmages,’ replied the goddess, as she quickly jogged down the marble steps, leaving Heimdall alone to shake his head, partly in awe, partly in trepidation.

Farden had finally returned.

1568 years ago

The World
, was a bucket of mud, tipped on its side.

Heavy-footed and uneasy, Korrin stood in the middle of it, like a hatted statue presiding over an overflowing delta. Rain dripped down his nose from a hole in his hat. Rivulets pestered his boots. Pebbles rattled past as the rain chased them. He lifted his head from studying his feet. Lightning scorched the glum sky in the east and showed the fractured islands in the bay. He was thankful for the dark. He had yet to recognise any of the men, or to be recognised himself.

The rain did its best to keep the mudpigs in their huts and the farmers in their cottages, but the day’s work had not finished with the coming of the storm. Troughs needed to be filled. Fences hammered. Gates repaired. It would be a while before muddy boots could be kicked off in front of the hearth, welcomed with a cup of warm ale and a fire to help the cold.

Korrin took a hesitant step forward, his first in half an hour, towards the most familiar of the cottages. There were eight of them altogether, all in a semi-circle around a fat cluster of pig pens. The oil lanterns did their level best to light their muddy doors and porches. In the pens, mudpigs waddled to and fro, fat and glistening with the rain. Korrin could feel the kiss of cold snouts in his palms as his eyes ran over them. He could hear their snorting and snuffling against the rain.

Korrin.

He made a sour face.

Korrin could wrench a man’s arm from his socket with a simple twist of his fingers. He could run for miles across ice and rock and never fear for tiredness. He could splice a hair down its centre with a throwing knife. He could even topple the giant they called Balimuel. And yet, standing in the mud outside his father’s hut, he was frozen and clumsy. He was cloth-tongued and scrawny. He was a boy again. Just like he had expected.

He looked back the way he had come. The Pens weren’t here. They weren’t to know. With that thought in his mind, he turned to leave.

The man who shouted to him had other ideas. ‘Ho, young sir! Lad!’ Korrin grit his teeth and turned back. A man was struggling with an empty trough. His back was bent nearly double with age and the others were too busy helping themselves to aid him.

‘Lend an old farmer your young muscles, could ye?’

If his father had instilled anything useful in him, it was that Korrin didn’t have an impolite bone in his body. Even though his mind sighed and threw up its hands, Korrin trudged forward to help the old man.

‘Thank ye, lad,’ said the old man. Korrin picked up the corner of the trough. The man brandished a sack of rotten vegetables, and Korrin hefted it into his shoulder. Old practice moved his hands, untwisting the wire, spilling the pig-slop in even piles, not a spot falling on his clothes. Not that it mattered, in the mud. The man patted him on the arm. ‘You’ve done that before.’

Korrin just nodded and smiled. He turned to leave, but the old farmer caught him by the elbow and turned him into the lanternlight. ‘I know you,’ he said, squinting. There was a sword hanging from Korrin’s belt. The man tutted at that. Swords were foreigners in this place. ‘At least, I know your eyes.’

‘I think you’ve made a mistake. I’m just passing through…’ he mumbled.

‘You don’t pass
through
Pollokstead, lad. This here’s the end of the road. Or the start of it,’ he tapped his nose. ‘Depending on how you look at it. Does your father know you’re here, or your grandfer?’

‘I…’

The old man suddenly called out to the others bustling through the mud with rope and tackle. ‘Ho, Ust!’ he called, looking about.

One of them, standing at the door of Korrin’s old cottage, tipped back his waxed hat. ‘What?’ he yelled over the drumming of the rain.

‘This lad looks a lot like your son!’

‘Can’t be. My son done run off!’

‘Well, come and ‘ave a look!’

Boots met mud, and there he was, Korrin’s father, framed by oil-light and flecks of rain. He left his door and strode forward to confront the two. Already his arms were crossed. Already his face had creased into its stern glower. A hard man, was Ust. Korrin stood as tall as he could and folded his hands behind his back, naturally, and rather unconsciously, coming smartly to attention.

Ust stopped short, and thumbed the rain from his nose. ‘Ain’t no son of mine that wears a sword,’ he muttered. The old man felt the hard edge to Ust’s words and shuffled away.

Korrin stood alone with his father. He too could feel the jab of his words. It was that same tone that had first stoked the fires of escape and resentment several years ago. His only reply was to bow his head. Korrin stared at his boots again, feeling as though the last year had never happened.

‘So what fort-lord did ye swear fealty to? Hmm, to get that sword, boy? Which one took ye in?’

Korrin shook his head. ‘None.’ He could almost hear his father’s sea-washed face creaking as his glowering deepened.

‘Tell me you ain’t no sell-sword then.’

‘No.’

More glowering. ‘A bandit? A rogue? Is that what my son left his father for?’

‘No.’

‘Then what? What cursed life did ye run to?’

Korrin frowned at that mud. His father’s tone made him flinch from practice. Ust was as tough as his pig-wrangling hands. He had beaten fear and resentment into Korrin with more than just words.

But despite it all, Korrin couldn’t help but chuckle at the question. He hadn’t the faintest clue. He said as much as he looked up and met his father’s stern eyes, forcing himself to meet them, as he had forced himself from his bed every day for the past year. ‘I don’t know. But by Jot’s roots, I’m good at it.’

‘Well at least yer good for somethin’, I tell ye,’ said Ust. It was in that moment that something clicked for Korrin. As he looked at his father, the small, tough man with hard eyes, at the mudpigs snuffling in their pens, at the mud running between his boots, he realised none of it mattered. The world was so much bigger than this, this place, this wiry little man. He knew more of it than any of these farmers. How dare they judge, when their horizons are so small.

‘Yes,’ Korrin smiled. ‘I am.’

“Do I police them or ban them? That is the question.

I once heard a tale of giant wild fires in the forests of the east, far beyond the Fool Roads. They say that these fires are not natural, but man-made. They ravage miles of land and belch smoke higher than the mountains. The tribes that set these fires shepherd them by scorching the earth in their path, guiding and leading them on. Why do they set these fires? Once the fires have died, the strangest fruits appear from the ashes. It appears that there are strange seeds buried in the eastern earth. To flower they need the scorching heat of a forest fire to wake them into sprouting. These seeds produce trees that are food, oil, husk, and wood to these tribes. Life, in seed-form.

The magick markets are like wild fires. Do I allow them to ravage this city, in the hope that they will bear fruit, corralling them as and when I can? Or do I refuse to light them at all, and go without these fruits? One thing is certain, whatever our decision, the Councils will disagree.”

Excerpt from the diary of Arkmage Durnus, dated Frostfall 899

3 days earlier

F
arden cracked an eye and stared at the bowed ceiling. He tested his mouth. His lips were dry and cracked. He lay in silence, waiting to see if the panic had truly died in his sleep. Mercifully, it had. Its corpse was a numb ache right between his eyes.

Farden sat up and groaned as the headache blossomed with his movement. A hangover times a hundred. It would subside as soon as he was on the road, he told himself.