Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series) (22 page)

‘A healer,’ Farden said, quickly getting to his feet.

Eyrum frowned. ‘Are you hurt, mage?’

‘Not me,’ Farden shook his head. ‘Elessi.’

Eyrum followed them with a quizzical look on his face.

Farden marched up to the old healer and put his hand on his arm as gently as his urgency would allow. The old Siren was still startled nonetheless. ‘Old man,’ Farden leant close. ‘I need your help.’

The Siren looked him up and down. There was dust in his wiry black beard. Flecks of blood sat on the shoulder of his robe. ‘I am sure you do, son, but so do these others. I am afraid you will have to get in line,’ he said, his voice a cracked rattle of parchment. He went to move on but the mage held him back, shaking his head.

‘No, no, I don’t need your bandages, I need your advice. Your knowledge. My friend in Krauslung has been attacked…’ he paused here, suddenly very aware of the number of ears around him, ‘…by a daemon. Now she refuses to wake up and our Arka healers are clueless. They’ve never seen such a wound before. I need to know how to help her and I am hoping that you Sirens have the answers.’

A few of those in earshot began to snigger and nudge each other. Daemons, how preposterous! Even Eyrum had to grimace at their mention. Tyrfing glared at each of them in turn.

The old healer’s lips quivered as he fought not to smile. He looked around. ‘It is kind of you to try to stir up some humour in such a dark situation, Arka, but unfortunately you’re wasting my time,’ he said.

‘And you’re wasting mine, old man. I am deadly serious.’ Farden held him a little tighter. He stared deep into his scale-rimmed eyes, as though trying to physically push the truth into the healer’s face. The healer’s smile gradually faded into a grimace.

Tyrfing piped up. ‘He is indeed,’ he said, turning to Eyrum. ‘Vice’s legacy.
Her
.’

‘So it’s true?’ Eyrum asked, still unconvinced. The Arkmage nodded soberly. ‘Well, she picked a fine time to rear her head.’

‘She has her father’s timing,’ Farden muttered over his shoulder. He turned back to the healer. ‘The Old Dragon told me that to be daemontouched is to know death. I want you to tell me he’s wrong.’

The healer squinted. ‘Are you sure it was a daemon, son?’

Farden was growing very tired very quickly. ‘Trust me, old man, an entire city watched three of them fall from the sky,’ he urged. He turned around to look at Eyrum and his men. ‘Why is this so hard to believe? You’re Sirens. Some of you must have been with us when we fought the hydra.’

A rider by Eyrum’s side spoke up. ‘I was. But that was different. That came from the other side. Daemons, they’re…’ he made a jab towards the ceiling with his finger.

Farden blew an exasperated sigh. He turned back to the healer. ‘Can you help my friend or not?’

The healer’s face twitched as he thought. He was very aware of the iron look in this mage’s eyes, and of the tight grip he had on his thin arm. It took him several moments before he was able to shake his head. ‘There is no cure for those who are daemontouched. I’m sorry.’

‘Then where are your colleagues?’ he demanded. The old man made a limp gesture to the back of the room.

‘They will say the same.’

Farden was already striding across the library. ‘We’ll see!’

‘Farden!’ Eyrum and Tyrfing called after the mage, but he was already interrogating another healer, this time a sharp-nosed, middle-aged woman in a smart, but blood-smeared, tunic. She was already shaking her head by the time the others caught up. Farden’s hands were slowly curling into fists.

‘I heard you with Insillir and I will tell you the same. There is no cure, mage,’ the healer was saying.

‘You Sirens are supposed to be the finest healers in Emaneska,’ Farden snapped. He kicked a nearby wall of books. ‘You have more history at your scaly fingertips than Arfell can dream of, more knowledge, more experience, and you’re telling me there’s no cure?’

The healer crossed her arms. Her face was stony. ‘That is exactly what I am saying. No amount of shouting or kicking will change that. I have sick people here, give them some peace and quiet, man.’

‘Ridiculous!’ Farden began to tear the books from the top of the makeshift wall. Book by book he ripped through it, glancing at titles as he dug. ‘You’re telling me that all this is useless?’

‘Farden!’ Tyrfing barked. Farden ignored him. He wheeled on Eyrum instead. ‘Do the wizards know anything about daemons? Anything? What about the dragons?’

‘FARDEN!’ yelled Tyrfing. The library went deathly quiet save for the muttering of the wizards in the corner. Farden looked as if he would explode into flame at any moment. He quivered with anger. Everybody was staring at him. They were slowly shaking their heads.

‘I refuse to believe that there’s no hope,’ Farden growled. ‘There has to be something…’ His boots squeaked as he turned on his heels and made for the very depths of the cavernous library. A few soldiers made half-hearted attempts to stop him but he shrugged them aside. Tyrfing rubbed his forehead.

‘You know where he’s going, don’t you?’ asked the big Siren.

‘Mhm,’ hummed Tyrfing.

‘And can he read dragonscript?’

‘Not unless he learnt it in Albion.’

‘Albion? So that was where he was?’

The Arkmage sighed. ‘It’s a long story, my friend.’

‘We have to go after him.’

‘Mhm.’

They found Farden exactly where they knew he’d be: in a dark and dusty corridor at the back of the library, hidden by a narrow arch and some equally dusty steps. Farden had snatched a lantern from somewhere. He was busy scouring the hallway’s thick oak shelves, staring at the gnarled spines of the countless tearbooks that lined them. They filled the shelves like forgotten jewels, stacked side by side. Every one of them sparkled in the light. Sapphire blues rubbed shoulders with dun coppers and flame-reds. Dusty emerald tones squeezed in between jet, quartz, and rare pyrite. Farden glared at each and every one of them, as if they holding secrets and refusing to divulge them. Farden reached up to grab a particularly thick one, but Eyrum stamped his boot loudly.

‘Keep your hands to yourself, mage. This hallway is a graveyard to us. Only our scholars can touch the books.’

Farden’s fingers stopped dead in their tracks. They clawed at the dusty air, frustrated. ‘What of Farfallen’s? Surely that…’

Eyrum held up a hand to interrupt him. ‘They gleaned whatever they could from that tome long ago, Farden. If there was a cure, they would know. Stop torturing yourself with hope.’

Farden slammed his hand against the butt end of a shelf. The solid bookcase didn’t even rattle. ‘I promised him,’ he hissed. ‘I looked right into his eyes and
promised him
.’ He winced as a dull pain spread across his chest.

‘Modren will forgive you,’ Tyrfing offered. It was all he could say. His eyes wandered over the tearbooks, wondering, like his nephew, whether there was a secret hidden in their pages. He didn’t show it, but he too had a pain in his chest.

‘How can you be so calm about this? So accepting? It’s Elessi we’re talking about,’ Farden scowled.

‘Futility, nephew. I don’t like this any more than you do.’

‘You don’t sound too concerned.’

‘You heard Towerdawn in the great hall, Farden. To be poisoned by a daemon is a death sentence. There is no cure for death. Elessi is slipping over to the other side, and we’re powerless to stop her.’

Farden scrunched up his eyes as he listened to his uncle’s words. He put his head against the oaken shelf and wrapped his hands around the back of his neck. Failure lapped at his mind like a hungry sea at a shoreline. All he could see when he shut his eyes was Modren’s face, and the look that had passed between them in that marble corridor. All he could see was Elessi cleaning his wounds the day that he had come back from Carn Breagh, the way she had dabbed and prodded with her cloths. The mage let his forehead roll back and forth across the wood. He knew the others were watching. They kept silent out of respect.

When he finally stood straight again, the mage didn’t know what to say. He raised his eyes to the ceiling and let his hands slide across his neck, as if he were about to strangle himself…

Farden froze. His fingers pressed against the knot of a scar running around his weathered neck, probing, poking, remembering. Of cold waters and pebbles, of a fingernail ship and a screaming figurehead. Of the pushing, always the pushing. The mage shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. The word was a pebble being dropped on the flagstones.

‘No?’

Farden wagged a finger. ‘No,’ he repeated.

‘No
what
?’ asked Eyrum.

‘There’s still hope.’

Tyrfing was on the verge of throttling his nephew. He was more stubborn than he remembered. He didn’t think it possible. ‘Farden, just let it go.’

‘No. You’re wrong. Wrong about curing death.’

Tyrfing tried to stay calm. He threw up his hands. ‘Please, enlighten us. What do you know that we don’t?’

Farden had begun to smile like a madman. ‘The truth. You
can
come back from the other side. Believe me.’

‘And how can you possibly know that?’

‘Because, uncle,’ Farden took a breath, ‘I think I’ve done it.’

Tyrfing was about to reply when he saw the look in his nephew’s eyes. Despite his smile, his pupils were like flint. Serious. Unflinching. There was a hardness in them that only truth can buy. Farden brought his face very close to his uncle’s. So close he could feel the heat of his breath on his cheek. So close they almost touched noses. ‘I can bring her back.’

Before Tyrfing could even absorb Farden’s words, he was off, jogging down the corridor, his boots throwing up little puff-clouds of dust. ‘Where is he going now?’ The Arkmage strangled the air.

‘I dread to think,’ Eyrum grumbled, utterly bemused. ‘But I think it’s best to follow.’

The hallway curved and wandered deeper into the mountain and its gloom. They followed the shine of Farden’s lantern as it bobbed along ahead, splashing urgent shadows across the bookshelves. They flanked them like the walls of a glittering canyon, caught in the mist of floating dust motes and abandonment. There was a reverence to the hallway’s state, like a graveyard, as Eyrum had said. Except here, the gravestones were memories and the tomes that held them close.

Farden had found the end of the corridor. He was in the middle of trying to hang the lantern’s handle on the wrist of a marble statue of an angry-looking Thron. Eyrum grunted with displeasure at the sight of the mage’s lack of deference. A statue it may have been, but it was still his god. Farden left the lantern dangling from one of Thron’s muscled arms and turned his attention to an ornate pedestal that rose out of the dust. Tyrfing stood by Farden’s side and stared at the giant tome that rested upon it, open and blank.

Eyrum did not look happy to be there. ‘What do you know of the
S’grummvold
?’ he asked gruffly.

Farden spread his hands over the pages, his fingers leaving tracks in the dust. ‘The Grimsayer?’ he asked, remembering its name.
How could he have forgotten this was here?
‘That it shows you dead things.’

Eyrum muttered something dark and disgruntled. He stood like a wall behind them, arms crossed and bruised face unsure.

‘What are you trying to do, Farden?’ asked Tyrfing.

‘I’m trying to find Elessi.’

‘If I remember rightly, she’s in Krauslung.’

‘Her body may be, but we know the rest of her is slipping to the other side. Call it her ghost, her soul, whatever. I will find out with this. If its not too late, I can find it and bring her back…’

‘
How
exactly, Farden?’

‘I don’t know yet. I’ve got an idea,’ Farden couldn’t help but swallow at that thought. ‘Hopefully I’m wrong about that.’

‘So, what? You’re going to drag her… her
soul
back from the other side by the scruff of its neck, back to her body?’

Farden flashed him a grin that many might have assessed as maniacal. Underneath that grin, the same clarity he had felt in Krauslung enveloped him. Clarity so crystal he felt as if he moved too fast something would snap. It made perfect sense. ‘If that’s what it takes, then that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’

‘By Thron. Shiver must have thrown you on the floor harder than we thought,’ Eyrum groaned.

Tyrfing was beside himself. ‘Can you even hear the words coming from your mouth?’ he gasped. Farden was far from listening. He was leaning over the book now, squinting at the blankness of its pages.

‘Show me anyone,’ he whispered to it. For a long moment, nothing happened. Farden bit his lip. Tyrfing moved to grab his nephew by the collar and drag him bodily back to the library, back to sense and reality, but to his surprise, it was Eyrum that stopped him. The big Siren caught the Arkmage’s hand and silently shook his head. It was then that the Grimsayer began to glow.

Two lights, like little orange fireflies, slid from the depths of the tome’s spine and floated into the air. Their tails were like threads of flame, weaving shapes and patterns behind them. They were brighter than Farden remembered, bigger too. He passed his hand gently through them and watched them roll and frolic. ‘Show me anybody,’ he repeated.

The pages slapped his hand as they flew past. They stopped as abruptly as they had begun, and soon enough the twin lights were weaving a figure as tall as a man’s hand, directly over the centre of the book’s spine. The figure was a tree troll of some sort, with arms and legs of broken branches and pine brush. Moss trailed from its head and arms like rags. It looked fearsome, yet sad. Dead.

‘When I first found this book, I asked for Durnus. In fact, I asked for Ruin, and the book couldn’t give me a straight answer at the time,’ Farden said. Something whispered in the darkness as he talked. Only he seemed to notice.

‘Farden is right. The Grimsayer will only show the ghosts of those who have passed to the other side, those who have left this mortal world. Dragons, Sirens, Arka, daemons, beasts… they are all kept within these pages. Everything that has ever died and will come to die.’