Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series) (20 page)

The air was deathly still. Not a single breeze nor zephyr disturbed the morning air. It would have been stifling, had it been any warmer.

Samara wandered on towards the animal sounds of the farm and the town hiding in the mist, somewhere up ahead. While she walked, she scanned the dusty, grassless ground, looking for something in particular. Whatever it was, it wasn’t to be found.

Samara soon came across a dry-stone wall that had seen better and more attentive times. Slumped and spilled in places, the wall was clogged with moss and mouse-droppings. Behind it lay a dust field dotted with tough grass and the odd woven basket of pale hay. Large shadows lumbered about in the fog. They mooed and dug at the dust with their hoofs. Samara dug her toe into the wall and swiftly vaulted it, landing with a light thud.

The cows quickly sensed the presence of something in their field, something very strange indeed. As a thin shape emerged from the mist, striding nonchalantly towards them, the patchwork beasts began to low fearfully. She oozed danger, and they could smell it. Luckily for them, cows were not what she was after. The girl paid them nothing but a sideways glance as they bowed their heads and quickly cantered to another corner of the field.

The chickens, on the other hand, were not so lucky.

Samara followed the sound of the muted clucking and burbling to a tumbledown hen-house that stood by a wooden gate. She crouched beside it and scraped a handful of dirt from the ground. A few sleepy hens stood on the little ramp that sloped from their raised door down to the earth. A few feathers sat like a rune at the foot of it. A smattering of blood lay in the dirt, an accidental blotch of scarlet ink, the signature of a fox. But chickens were not known for their lengthy memories. They had already forgotten their lost comrade and the red-haired predator, and were now staring at the unfamiliar girl crouching by their house with a mixture of curious intrigue and hunger.

Samara held out her hand, cupped as though full of grain, and offered it to the stupid birds. The docile creatures were used to humans handing them food, and quickly came down the ramp to investigate. It was the last mistake they ever made. In a flash, Samara seized two of them by their necks and spun them around in a circle until their necks snapped with a loud squawk. She was back at the drystone wall before their feathers had fallen to the dust.

Crouching behind the wall, Samara found a length of twine in her pocket and used it to tie the two chickens together. She slung them over her shoulder and followed the wall to its crumbled corner. Pausing there, she flicked a feather from her leather sleeve and looked around. There was a dirt road a few yards away that no doubt led into the town. Samara looked right, towards the town, and then left, where the road sloped gently up a small hill, and where a dark shape hovered high in the mist. She gazed at it, trying to make it out, but it was just a shapeless blotch in the morning haze. Curiosity piqued, Samara went to investigate.

It took a moment for its features and edges to loom into clarity, but once it did, Samara stood underneath it, and let her eyes rove over its greasy hinges, its rusty bolts and locks, its spikes and its bars.

It was a gibbet, suspended high over the road by a sturdy pole and a moss-covered beam choked by iron chain. It looked as though it had seen ten thousand dawns in its time; its iron cage was half-rusted away and tired, while the wood it hung from was grey with age. Cracks ran up and down the pole like thin veins of coal in a granite face.

There was a skeleton inside the gibbet, a crow-picked and weather-bitten frame of bones. It was easy to see the man had been dead for a decade. Whatever flesh its cracked armour had once protected was now long gone. Even the maggots had moved on. The armour itself, bent and buckled, a memory of polished steel now washed moon-grey by rain and time, was that of an old Skölgard soldier. Samara recognised its style. Even though the empire had fallen, some men and women still clung to their old life, in the way that the lost do. Here, in the remnants of old Skölgard lands, now dubbed the Crumbled Empire, some still wore their old armour and their memories on their chests. Depending on which way the empire had crumbled, some towns and lands didn’t mind the relics, while others despised them. This man, now staring hollow-eyed at the sleepy sun, had obviously stumbled across the wrong town.

Samara reached up to rock the gibbet. Its chains and bars squealed like a strangled cat. The dawn was creeping into day, and a blunt glow was beginning to caress the wooden beams. Something glinted at the girl’s feet and she looked down to find a muddy puddle. It held the reflection of the gibbet in it, making it wobble and waver slightly. Samara smiled. Tossing her dead chickens to one side, she quickly knelt down in the dirt.

She put her finger in the puddle and swirled it around curiously, watching the mud dance underneath the rippled surface. The water was cold, despite the dawn sun. Samara put her elbows on her knees and waited for the water to calm again, for the reflection to grow still and mirror-like once more, and when it had, something rather disturbing happened.

The girl watched intently, not a sign of fear or surprise on her face as the reflection of the gibbet began to move. There was a squeak of rusty chains as something twitched above her. Bones clicked. The skeleton reached up to push its jawbone back into place and then wriggled it about, testing, trying. Had it a tongue, it would have licked its jagged line of broken teeth to wet them. With a rattle and a whine of metal, the skeleton looked down, and slowly sank to its knees. It stared, still empty-eyed and very much dead, through the gaps in its cage at the young girl in the puddle’s reflection. Samara leant forward to greet it.

‘Where are you?’ said the dead thing, in a breathy voice that slithered over its weathered bones and climbed the bars of the gibbet, dripping, seeping.

‘North, near the border of what used to be Vorhaug,’ replied Samara, calm as could be.

The skeleton waved its bony hand. Its teeth chattered as it tested and prodded its jaw again. ‘What of the seer? She prays to us no longer,’ it hissed.

Samara frowned. ‘She’s… distracted.’

‘By what, indeed?’

‘By her problems.’

The skeleton squinted. Its eye-sockets cracked and splintered. ‘The stones again?’ it said. The tone of its voice was growing angry.

Samara nodded. ‘She says her questions are too… am… ambiguous. The stones are confused, she says.’

The skeleton grumbled to itself. ‘How many have you shown your knife to now?’

‘Twenty-four Written. A dozen other mages.’

‘And how many remain?’

Samara shrugged.

The skeleton reached down and jabbed its finger at the girl. ‘Dare to shrug at me? Give me numbers, girl!’

Samara bowed her head. ‘A score, perhaps thirty. Three that we know of for sure. The Undermage and captain of the Written, the Arkmage, and of course,
him.
’

The skeleton sniffed. The bones around its dead nostrils shivered. ‘Powerful as we are growing, we still cannot see Farden, just as the seer cannot. Something hides his magick. But something tells me he will be unwilling to stand in your way. Do not worry about him.’

‘I wasn’t, though Lilith says I should fear the Arkmages, especially my father’s brother, Ruin.’

‘You have the blood of both, and therefore are stronger than both, child. Ignore the seer. We continue with the plan.’

‘And once you fall…?’

The skeleton waved its hand. ‘You will not be alone.’

The girl nodded to the puddle.

‘How do you feel?’

Samara looked up at the mist for a while. The skeleton above her creaked and sighed, impatiently waiting for her answer. She finally gave it. ‘Ready.’

‘Then you have wasted enough time stalking mages in the shadows. It is time. Don’t let the seer delay you any more.’ The skeleton sagged slightly, as whatever magick that was animating its lifeless bones began to drain away. ‘And child?’

‘Yes?’

The skeleton slumped into a heap at the bottom of the gibbet. The voice wafted into the misty air, echoing in her mind. ‘If the seer continues to prove herself useless, or stands in your way, you may remove her.’

Samara pulled a face, not quite a wince, but not quite anything else. ‘Of course,’ she replied. After a while, she got to her feet and stood in the puddle, looking up at the slumped, broken skeleton hanging above her head. One of its feet had slipped through the gaps in the bars and dangled in the air. Samara reached up and flicked it with her finger. One of the toes broke off and flew into the mist. With an amused hum, the girl grabbed the foot by its ankle and wrenched it downwards. As the skeleton’s foot came loose, the gibbet and its frame exploded into countless splinters, spraying the dirt road with molten iron and charred wood. The skeleton and its armour were vaporised in a cloud of fire and smoke. As the chaos cleared, Samara, completely untouched, walked calmly away, two smoking chickens slung over her shoulder.

When she returned to the little camp, Lilith was still sitting cross-legged in the dust. She was nudging her stones back and forth with her knuckle. At the sound of footsteps she looked up. ‘Finally,’ she hissed.

Two chickens landed on her lap in reply. Lilith lifted them up. She squinted at where their feathers were slightly charred. ‘So that’s what that bloody noise was. You want to watch yourself, girl. You’ll draw attention to us.’

‘So what?’

‘What do you mean?’ snapped Lilith, swivelling around to face the girl. ‘You know…’

Samara remained standing ‘We’ve wasted enough time hunting Written in the dark. It’s time.’

‘
I
decide when it’s time.’

‘No, Lilith, you don’t. We’re leaving tonight. Krauslung’s time is up.’

Lilith slapped the dirt, making her stones wobble. ‘There are more Written left, not to mention Ruin, Modren, and Tyrfing. And Farden. And not just them either, there are other mages in that city, Written, and Siren wizards no doubt!’

‘I’m ready for them.’

‘Are you? You might be able to take down a single mage, but what about ten at a time, twenty, fifty? They’ll swarm you. They’ve grown stronger now too, you know that.’

‘As have I.’

‘There’s only one of you.’

Samara lifted her chin. ‘Well, it won’t just be me, will it?’

Lilith spat. ‘You think you’re ready for that? You’ve barely seen fifteen years pass by, and you think you’re ready? Fool of a girl! We’re going north, so pack your things.’

Samara stepped forward and grabbed the old seer by her hair. Lilith yelped and screamed, lashing out with a handful of sharp fingernails. Samara lifted her from the dust and held her in mid-air. She ignored the fingers clawing at her long hair. ‘We’re going south,’ she said. ‘It’s time I did what I’m supposed to do. You’ve had your fun.’

With a snarl, Lilith wrenched herself free and stood, fuming and fearful, beside the burnt-out fire. ‘Fine,’ she relented. ‘Fine.’

In the pocket of her tunic, Samara relaxed her grip on the little knife.

Moodily, Lilith sat back down and picked up her three stones. Samara sat opposite her and put a hand in the dead coals of the fire. They quickly came back to life, and after adding a few more scraps of wood and removing the carcass of the water rat, the spit was soon rotating over a crackling fire, sporting a freshly-plucked chicken.

Lilith had said nothing since their brief argument. She was still staring at her seerstones and silently begging them to make sense. Samara watched her as she fiddled with the spit. The girl pitied her in a way. Sometimes, in the dark depths of a wine-sodden evening, Lilith would occasionally let stories slip from her drink-stained lips. Samara would listen to the seer rant about her life and about its brief peaks and the more consistent troughs, about how she had lost her arm, about her stones and what they had whispered to her on stormy nights. A seer was never supposed to look at her own future, so she had said, but Lilith had been stupid enough to look. She had evaded that future ever since, living off wine and daemon blood, becoming twisted and bitter from both. Fate could be evaded, but not for long.

Samara sighed as she watched the old seer draw circles around her stones with a long fingernail. Lilith had raised her, after all. For whatever reason, be it her selfish, thirsty ways, or a promise to her dead father, Vice, or maybe even something resembling fondness, Lilith had taken Samara under her dusty wing, and taught her everything.

The girl reached for her knife and a flask of water. The glint of the steel in the morning sunlight caught Lilith’s eye and she looked up, wary. Samara held the knife with its blade pointing down and dug it into the soft flesh of her palm. She barely winced. Blood sprang into the sunlight, eager to escape, and began to pool in her hand. Samara put the knife down and reached for the flask. Holding the mouth of it between her fingers, she tilted her hand so that the blood dribbled down its throat. She held her hand there for several minutes, until the cut began to close up of its own accord. The blood dried a purplish-brown on her skin.

Lilith could already feel the saliva flooding her mouth. When Samara silently handed the flask to her, she couldn’t help but snatch it from her young hands. The girl went back to her cooking, and said nothing. Lilith turned away from her and began to sip, and then gulp, and then slurp at the bloody water. The pain came as it always did, and Lilith curled up into a convulsing, sweating ball for the rest of the afternoon.

When she awoke, night had fallen, and there was a shred of blanket covering her shoulders. The fire was still burning and the second chicken was now rotating above it. Samara sat on the opposite side of it. She was hunched over but wide-awake. Her face was expressionless.

Lilith, on the other hand, was not herself. The grey had disappeared from her hair and face, and now pinpricks of crimson dotted her cheeks. Her skin had pulled itself together. Her eyes had lost some of the dull mistiness they had been clutching. Lilith looked down and attempted to wiggle the fingers of her withered arm. Rewarded by a faint twitching, she cackled quietly to herself. Then, remembering her seerstones, she cast about frantically for them. ‘Where are they?’ she hissed. Samara pointed to the side of the fire and Lilith scrambled to grab them. She clutched them in her hands for a moment, warming them, whispering to them, before throwing them to the charcoal-speckled dirt. Samara looked on.