Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series) (46 page)

The mage swung his legs over the bed and hoisted himself upright. There it was: a bag of nevermar on the floor. Farden shot it a dark look. It had deserted him, just when he needed it most. Just when his past had come back to haunt him. Come to taint his beach. Farden looked out the window. There he was, sitting cross-legged and pensive by the fire, still wearing his strange leather coat. Ilios was nowhere to be seen. Jeasin was in the water, cleaning herself with sand and clumps of sea-grass.

It was a soft day, its edges blurred with early sea-mist. The sun was a good height above the horizon and already the air was warm, tempered only by the crisp breeze coming off the rippling water. It would be hot later. The wispy clouds hovering high overhead might have spoken of evening rain.

There was a whooshing sound as wings passed over the shack, making the roof rattle in their wake. Farden watched Ilios land softly on the beach. There was an enormous fish stuck in his beak. Loki looked up as the dripping gryphon stood over him. Ilios dropped the fish right in his lap and the god cried out. Farden couldn’t help but snigger.

Farden realised he was still shirtless and dangerous, so he cast around for his shirt and quickly put it on. His stomach growled angrily at him. The weakness in his limbs was still very apparent. His body had a long way to go before it was healed. Farden could feel the clamminess of last night’s sweating on his skin, and he glared at the nevermar again. That hadn’t helped matters.

How had it turned to poison?
He wracked his brains, searching for some excuse or a rational explanation, anything that could save him the pain of it failing him.

Maybe it had soured.

Maybe it was a bad batch.

Maybe Bastio had tricked him.

It had worked before.

Maybe he was too tired.

That had never been an issue.

Maybe his body was too weak.

Neither had that.

Maybe Loki had poisoned it.

He couldn’t have.

Arguments and answers battled to and fro. Farden shut his eyes and silenced them. The true answer was inevitable. His body had had its fill of it. Farden clenched his fist, grit his teeth, and stamped on the little bag of traitorous weed. Once, twice, three times, and each time was more vicious than the last. When the floorboards began to splinter, he stopped, letting the headache and weakness congratulate him. The mage took a deep breath and sighed.

At least Farden still had one last crutch. Out of the corner of his eye he spied a mud-covered pillowcase leaning up against the door. His armour.

He had worn his vambraces several times since the escape from Tayn, but only for short periods during the day when Jeasin had been sleeping. The feeling of their cold caress was almost euphoric, but Farden had promised himself he would wait to don it all until he and Jeasin were completely safe.

Farden peeled back the crusty pillowcase and revealed the glittering metal underneath. He quickly slid the vambraces on, then the gauntlets, and lastly the greaves. He could feel their cold touch even through his grubby cloth trousers. The metal slithered and whispered as it hugged him. The mage stayed crouching beside the door for a little while as he savoured the strange, yet familiar, sensation spreading through his veins and tired muscles. How he’d missed it. A little smile hovered on his lips for a short while. It looked foreign on his face, given the circumstances.

When he had finished relishing the feel of the armour, Farden left the shack and strode onto the beach. The metal around his limbs glittered in the late morning sun. Loki and Ilios looked up. Jeasin was busy washing. He came to a halt by the fire, which Loki was busy trying to re-light.

Farden didn’t waste any time getting to his point.

‘Whilst I’m sure your message is utterly thrilling and of the utmost importance, Loki, I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time coming here. You too, Ilios,’ Farden stated. The gryphon growled softly. ‘I’m leaving at midday. Don’t follow me.’

Loki shrugged. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said.

That wasn’t the answer Farden had been expecting. ‘You hear me, god? You’ve wasted your time. I’m not interested in whatever message they’ve asked you to deliver.’

‘I knew you wouldn’t be,’ Loki nonchalantly replied. ‘I told them the very same thing. But they wouldn’t listen. I said you’d want to be left alone to your pitiful existence. In your shack, with your nevermar and your armour. Killing things for coin. That after all this time you wouldn’t care about her.’

Farden raised an eyebrow. ‘Who?’

But Loki held up his hands and shook his head. ‘No, no, I’ve said enough as it is. You’re not interested, Farden. I’ll save you the trouble. Wouldn’t want to add any more bad memories to your growing mound.’

The mage shot him a murderous look and sat down. Ilios took a few steps back and sat down. Farden met his eyes. ‘And you can stop looking at me like that, Ilios. My decision is final.’ Ilios warbled something and looked away.

Loki took a little knife and a grubby potato from one of his pockets. He began to slice it into chunks, making a musical thud every time they hit the bottom of the rusty stew pot. The resurrected fire slowly began to crackle and lick at its sides. ‘I think you’ve offended him,’ he said, nodding towards the gryphon.

Farden pinched his aching forehead between his fingers. ‘What do you expect from me? What do any of you expect from me?’

‘Nothing. We’re just extending a simple invitation, that’s all,’ Loki said with an innocent face.

‘Stop it. Your games aren’t going to work on me, god.’

The three sat in silence for a moment. Jeasin had escaped the icy cold of the water and was trundling slowly up the beach. Her sandy hair was even sandier than ever before, and tangled with the salt. Her face and eyes were red from where she had scrubbed them vigourously, almost like she had been crying. Almost. Her robe was wet from the sea, and barely clung about her.

She’d heard the mage’s voice. ‘You’re alive are you? Shame,’ she called.

‘Only just,’ came the muttered reply.

Jeasin shuffled forward with her arms outstretched. She stopped when she heard the thud of another chunk of potato in the pot. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Farden is leaving. Alone,’ Loki informed her. Farden glowered. He resisted the urge to punch him. Loki could see the intention in the mage’s dark eyes and got to his feet. ‘Need some water for the stew,’ he said, announcing his retreat to the water’s edge.

‘You’re leavin’ then,’ she stated, her anger simmering just under the surface. Farden could see it waiting to erupt.

‘That I am,’ he said.

‘Heartless.

‘I told you. I prac…’

‘How’d you do it? How’d you cut out bits of your heart and toss ‘em away?’

‘I…’

‘How’d you turn your back so damn coldly? It ain’t human.’

Farden didn’t reply.

Jeasin walked a little closer. ‘You told me what you left behind once, when you were drunk. Krauslung. Arkmages. Magick councils. You don’t remember it, I know you don’t. I didn’t believe you. Thought it a story for the pillow, like all the other men tell. They make ‘em up just for somethin’ to say. Make ‘emselves sound bigger and better than they really are. Sad, really. I took you for one of them.’

‘And do you believe me now?’

Jeasin spat. ‘Not in the slightest. Arkmages. Arkathedrals. What rubbish. But the bits you told me about you leaving your loved ones behind, turnin’ your back on them? I believe that bit. Now that I’m seein’ it in action.’

‘You’re still not coming. I’m a curse.’

The anger bubbled up. ‘You’re damn right you are, but you’re still takin’ me with you! I ain’t going to be another one of those,’ she waved her hand, ‘those you left ‘cross the sea, whoever they are. I’m going with you!’

Farden tried to stop the words from coming, but they forced their way out anyway. Truth always did, just like it always hurt. ‘I’ve no need for a whore any more, Jeasin. There are plenty of those in Krauslung!’ he shouted at her.

Jeasin turned away. After trilling something damning, the gryphon did too. He followed her to the shack, sitting down next to its step like an odd-shaped door. Farden punched the sand with a red-gold fist, eliciting a futile thud. He looked around for something to break. Loki was returning from the sea, bearing a pot full of water.
That might do
. ‘You didn’t handle that very well, did you?’

Farden got to his feet. ‘Go fuck yourself,’ he cursed.

Loki let him storm two strides before delivering his killing strike. ‘She’s getting married, Farden,’ he said, stopping the mage in his sandy tracks. Loki continued. ‘Elessi. She’s getting married. Three days from now. She thought you might want to be there.’

It took Farden a full minute to turn back around. When he did, it was with his fist. He struck Loki hard in the face, just to the right of his nose. Surprisingly, Loki didn’t stop him. He took everything the blow had to offer and more besides, landing hard on his rear. Farden may have been weak, but he was angry, and that made up for whatever his knuckles might have lacked. Loki scrunched up his face and blinked, tasting the odd sensation the fist had left in his face.

‘I hope that was a new experience for you,’ Farden spat on him. His armour clinked as he stormed up the beach. It felt good to hit a god.

Loki simply smiled as Farden disappeared over a ridge of boulders. His message had been delivered. It would work its magick on him, slowly but surely. Like a worm gnawing through an apple. Loki rubbed his face, and then tested his nostrils and lip for blood. He needn’t have bothered. After all, shadows didn’t bleed. He couldn’t help but wonder what colour it would be if they did.

Two hours later, and Farden was still sitting under his ash tree at the lip of the hill. The bark was sturdy and warm behind his back. The wind tasted of salt. A few seagulls wheeled overhead. In the branches above him, a sparrow sang to the afternoon.

‘What do I do?’ Farden voiced the question aloud to the barren wilderness. The only answer he got was the little slap of a winged seed falling in his lap. Farden looked down at the tiny thing and picked it up. It had one solitary wing like that of a dragonfly, with brown veins running through its translucent paper. At the end of the wing was the seed itself. Again, brown, wrapped in a husk. Farden held it by the tip of the wing and looked up. From what he could remember of spring, trees needed leaves before they could sprout fruit. There were no others hanging from the branches or dangling from the brittle grey twigs.
Ambitious little thing
, he thought.

Farden twirled it around in his cracked fingers and watched how the sunlight shone through its wing.
Spinning Jennies
. The name floated up out of the misty depths of his memories, a trickle of silliness. That’s what the other children had called them. Spinning Jennies. He faintly remembered standing on a rock and tossing handfuls of them into the air. Farden could hear delighted little screams echo in his ears.

His childhood had been locked away with the other memories, though not on purpose. A memory grew mould and eroded just like every other relic. Time had done the groundwork; nevermar had finished the job.

‘Ugh,’ sighed the mage, and for the third time that hour, Farden tried to make sense of it all, splayed out in front of him like the crumpled landscape.

For years he had been living in self-induced shadow, crouched and hidden in a fog of his own making. The road he had taken there had been swallowed up and forgotten. He had enjoyed the numbness of it. It had been dark and cold of course, but it was his. Now he could feel the fog lifting and the sunlight barging its way in. He feared it. Despised it. It was a big beaming ray of change, and what had already been burnt away could never be found again. His fog had been permanently cleared. He had cursed it, fought it, and clawed at it, but to no avail. Something had changed. The Duke was gone. The nevermar had abandoned him. Krauslung had climbed back into his thoughts. He sighed again. Like it or not, his little world had crumbled.

Farden rubbed his grizzled chin. The mage looked up at the frayed rope dangling above him, and he remembered what he had told himself, standing knife-drawn and ready over Kint and Forluss:
alive was something
.

‘Well,’ he said, beating the wilderness to an answer. ‘Alive is something. But am I living?’
No
. He was merely existing. He thought of the leper of Wodehallow, and the wise words he had spoken on the way to the keep. Of life and how a man could squander it. How the very gift of living deserved better. Gods, what was his name? Farden scrabbled to remember it, but it evaded him. He scrunched up his eyes.

Elessi was getting married, and according to Loki, she had invited him despite everything. She deserved better than another stab of disappointment on her wedding day, he thought. They all deserved better. Traffyd and Seria. Durnus. Tyrfing. All of them. The thought of that almost made him laugh. It would have been a laugh without a trace of pleasure. He had spent countless evenings vowing exile and solitude, all the while obliterating his old life with blood and drugs. They had sent countless messengers, innumerable scouts, they had even sent a god to fetch him! But after everything, Elessi was the one who could finally do it. Farden had always harboured the secret fear that a certain female would one day haul him back to his old life. He had never expected it to be Elessi. Somebody else. He clenched a fist and shivered at the thought of
her
.