Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series) (59 page)

The Arkmage clapped his hands together and a shivering ball of lightning blossomed between them. Durnus let it grow and grow, until he held it above his head. As the men around him pointed and yelled to each other about the lights in the sky, Durnus raised his spell high, straining, and then threw it with all his might.

By the skin of the spell’s teeth, it made it through her whirling maelstrom, just close enough to knock one of her legs out from under her. Samara faltered, momentarily losing her concentration. If Durnus were closer, he might have seen an expression of utter horror on her face, as if it was the first time she had ever felt the sting of magick. Horror was quickly usurped by hatred, however, and now, knocked to her knees, she pulled all the harder.

Durnus spat. He turned to a nearby Written and yelled in his face, over the roar. ‘Get the people away from here, now!’

‘Right away, your Mage!’ replied the man, sprinting away.

‘Are they what I think they are?’ asked a voice from behind him. It was Modren. Durnus nodded. ‘Then may the gods help us.’

‘Modren, my good friend, the gods are right here with us, and as helpless as the next man,’ Durnus looked behind him, where two faint shimmers of light told him that the gods were standing high up on the hill, watching the chaos. Modren followed the Arkmage’s gaze. They were two solitary specks, standing still amongst a crowd of panicking, running people. Their chins were high, as were their eyes, glued to the sky.

‘Ready the men,’ ordered Durnus.

Modren narrowed his eyes. ‘For a fight they’ve never had before, it seems.’ And with that, he turned on his heel and began to bark order after order to his men and mages. They moved to his bidding with alacrity, following every word like trained dogs of war. Only Durnus stayed behind. With a grunt, he raised another spell, and hurled it down the hill once again.

‘
Three?!
’ a shrill shout punctured the roar. Samara flinched as another spark spell sprayed dirt in her face. The strain was almost unbearable. One of her shoulders had been wrenched from its socket already. The other was soon to follow.

‘Three?’ Lilith yelled again. ‘That’s it?! Where are the others?’

‘Too…’ Samara held strong as yet another huge ball of lightning struck the ground around her feet. The earth groaned underneath her. She was almost done. Just a little more. ‘…difficult,’ she managed.

Something twitched, like a ljot string snapping. Not in her arm, but elsewhere, in the air about her. The spell began to weaken, and Samara dropped her arms to the applause of thunder. She rolled to the broken earth as yet another spell came flying in. She barely deflected it. Lilith darted forward and grabbed Samara by the scruff of her collar, dragging her to the little outcrop of rocks she had been hiding behind. ‘Where are the others?’ she cried.

‘It was too hard!’ Samara snapped. The whirlwind still spun around them, masking their little escape.

Lilith was purple with either rage, or disappointment, or both. Samara was too exhausted to care. ‘I knew it! I knew you should have bloody waited! Come on, we need to leave!’ she yelled.

Samara shrugged her off and stumbled to her feet. ‘I’m staying!’

‘To do what?!’

The girl looked up into the sky, where the white stars were growing bigger and brighter as each chaotic second ticked by. ‘To watch,’ she said, ‘and to finish Far…’ But she said no more, and instead, promptly toppled over. Her eyes rolled back into her skull. The girl was out cold. The spell had drained her like a drunk with a wineskin.

‘Move yourself, you foolish girl! We need to leave!’ Lilith began to haul her away from the chaos and the exploding spells. With the dust and the smoke and the fire, nobody saw them leave. Besides, they were all too busy watching the stars falling.

In the higher places of the sky, where the blue groped at the cold, black edges of the emptiness, where the air couldn’t reach, where the lungs would shrivel in a moment’s work, the falling stars made no noise. No fire seeped from their flanks. No roar followed them down. Their tails were dust and diamonds. It was almost serene, peaceful, in a strange way, to see three stars falling in arrowhead unison, silent as could be.

Then, with a solid, resounding boom that made the mountains shake for miles around, they punched their way deeper into the sky. Fire licked at them. Smoke belched from their tails. Dust hissed as it burnt away in the furnace of falling. The grey-green land rose up to greet them in a firm embrace. The world beneath was full of running, panicking shapes, small as any ant. The stars, just for a moment, seemed to clench themselves together. Had anyone dared to face them, in the seconds before they plummeted into the earth, they might have seen a smile in their rocky faces.

One. Two. Three.

They hit the ground in quick ear-splitting succession. They spread themselves wide across the gap between Manesmark and the gates of Krauslung. Much to the horror of hundreds, one ploughed straight into one of the wedding tents, reducing it to a gaping hole of ash. It was like watching boulders being thrown into a millpond. Wave after smoking wave of rock and dirt exploded from the stars’ graves. Soldiers flew aside like broken dolls. Mages screamed their shield spells and prayed for safety as they huddled behind them. The wedding guests simply cowered behind anything that resembled shelter and beat the flames from their clothes. It was carnage, chaos, mayhem.

And that was just the opening act.

Aghast, Farden stared as one of the stars collided with the top of the distant hill. Even from there he could see the chairs and charred bunting flying in all directions, specks of white in a fountain of rock. He was so horrified he barely flinched when the second and third stars crashed behind him. One fell so close it showered him with dirt and pebbles, forcing his face into the ground with its shockwave. Farden winced as a pebble clacked off his skull. There would be a lump later, if there ever was a later.

Without the spell forcing him down, Farden summoned an energy he didn’t know he had and got to his feet. One foot shakily plodded in front of the other. One, then the other, and so forth, until he was striding up the ruined hill as fast he could, wading through a pile of screaming people and fallen soldiers. His sword was lost. All he had was his fists and his armour. He almost laughed at the thought of facing the fallen stars so empty handed. One, then the other, his feet stumbled on towards the Spire.

Somebody grabbed his arm as he marched through the jumbled ranks of bewildered recruits. ‘Farden!’ came a cry. It was Tyrfing. His face was smudged with dirt. The robe he had been wearing had been half-torn away, betraying the Scalussen plate-mail hiding underneath, greener than a springtime emerald. ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

‘Wasting time talking to you,’ came the grunted answer, as Farden shrugged himself away. Tyfing barked a few orders to the men, rallying them into some semblance of order, and darted after him.

‘You shouldn’t be here, not in your state!’

‘Where’s Elessi?’ yelled Farden, as he broke into a stiff jog. ‘And Modren?’

‘Modren is heading towards the Spire as we speak. Elessi is hopefully locked safely inside.’

‘Hopefully?’ Farden grit his teeth to keep from cursing at his uncle. Their feet pounded the torn grass, pushing through anyone that got in their way. The people trapped on the road had no idea which direction to run, so they ran in all of them, like headless fowl. ‘Just remember, you wanted this!’

Tyrfing didn’t have an answer for that.

‘We need to go faster,’ said Farden, wincing as he stumbled on a rock.

‘Hold on to your legs then,’ Tyrfing warned him, as he clamped his hand onto his nephew’s shoulder. To Farden’s utter surprise, his legs began to fly beneath him, just numb bits of meat, flailing at the grass. They moved faster than he had ever imagined a pair of legs could move. Tyrfing’s did the same, and together they sprinted at the pace of sabre-cats up the hill, towards the Spire.

It was a field of fire that welcomed them. Ash had replaced confetti. A gaping, smoke hole had been bored into the hillside, only a few dozen yards from the scaffolding of the Spire. What had been white was now either black, or various shades of dirt. Bitter-tasting air had replaced the sweet smell of wedding bouquets and waiting food. What was left of the feast had been thrown into the dirt.

Modren was there, barking orders as if his throat was possessed. With the help of the scattered Written, he was frantically trying to rally the soldiers together while at the same time getting the people into the Spire or simply out of the way. Tyrfing began to shout his own orders, marshalling a nearby squad of bewildered soldiers. The air was touched with sulphur. It eked from the hole like pus from a wound.

As Tyrfing left him, Farden’s legs returned to their aching selves, and he stumbled forward to stare at the hole. Soldiers were quickly lining up around it, spears and swords glinting in the midday sun. Mages and archers formed second and tertiary lines, nocking arrows to their bows and winding up their finest spells. They would need it for what was about to come.

Farden winced as the heat from the star’s scar seared his skin. The sulphurous smoke caught in his throat, and he quickly backed away. Modren caught sight of him.

‘Farden!’ he yelled over the masses. Farden looked up and caught the Undermage’s gaze as he marched through the ranks. ‘How?’ he shouted, once he was near enough, mouth agape and arms wide. ‘How the fuck did you escape?’

Farden shrugged. ‘Must have been magick,’ he said, and then, ‘is she safe?’

Modren nodded. ‘In the Spire, locked in with the rest.’

Farden looked to the infant Spire, a bristling mass of scaffolding and stout brick. Its lower levels might hold. He hoped it had a cellar. ‘And is it done?’

‘What?’

‘You and her.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, what a lovely day it must be for you.’

Modren glared. His mirror-steel armour was covered in dirt and garnished with bits of singed grass. ‘Well you better have some of it left, because your bitch of a daughter has brought some uninvited guests,’ he snapped. There was no trace of humour in his voice. He was doing it for the men. They stared at Farden with narrowed gazes. The word “daughter” rustled through their ranks.

Farden scowled. ‘What…’ he began, but a shiver in the ground interrupted him.

‘You’re about to see,’ muttered Modren, as he dragged Farden away from the hole and back through the ranks. Durnus was there, and Tyrfing, and a handful of Written clad in Scalussen armour. One of them silently handed Farden a sword, nodded, and said no more. There was still work to be done. Talking could wait.

At least they didn’t have to wait long.

If was safe to say that when a black tail snaked out of the smoking pit, every soldier but the bravest took a little step backward. When the clawed hand, brandishing talons curved like yellow scythes, reached up and cracked a rock in half, they took two.

‘Steady now!’ ordered Tyrfing. He glanced behind him, down the hill, and saw movement in the other two craters. He cursed under his breath.
Let the men hold
, he begged whomever was listening.