Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series) (48 page)

Farden looked out and scratched his beard. What was he waiting for, besides the bath? For it all to sink in? Or for the dream to subside and fall out from under him? He was waiting mainly for his headache to disappear, but he knew it would be pestering him for a while yet. The nevermar was still having its way with him. Was he waiting to feel better, or to feel worse? He was waiting to feel something, that was for sure. Something that nudged the needle, to tell him whether he had made a mistake or not. Whatever it was, it was taking its sweet merry time about it.

Farden had never been one for waiting.

Looking out on his long-forgotten city, Farden decided he would wait no longer. The city’s innards were calling to him, and the urge to melt into them grew unbearable. The bath could wait.

Farden turned on his heel and wrestled his way into the new clothes that had been draped over the corner of his borrowed bed. They felt soft, and that softness was a foreign quality that made him wary.

‘Little steps,’ Farden said aloud. He shimmied out of his armour and laid it aside, then shrugged off his torn crimson cloak and his road-ragged shirt. The trousers fell in a heap next to them. Moving quickly to ignore the bruises and scars, he put on the new clothes and made for the door.

Half an hour later and he was standing on the cobbles of a city he barely recognised. The nevermar wasn’t to blame for that. Fifteen years was a lifetime for a city as well as a man, especially for one he had left in a state of corpsehood and destruction.

Farden hoisted up his hood like a shield and struck out for Krauslung’s very centre. He took his steps slowly; partly to take it in, partly for the sake of his aching legs. The day was cool. The sun warm. The city was in the busy throes of a dying market day.

Krauslung was a honeycombed madness. Its alleys and curving streets seemed narrower and deeper than he remembered. He felt as if he were an ant in a canyon of doors, gutters, awnings, and criss-cross windowpanes. Farden didn’t really mind. Here he could disappear in plain sight. He remembered liking this. It had been his first and favourite hobby in his younger days.

As he stumbled into the first of the countless market squares, Farden also encountered his first preacher.

At the corner of two alleyways, a man stood tall on a little wooden stage. He was all forehead and nose. A confident man, burly, with a sense of a brawler about him. His hair had been dyed a purple-red, like an angry bruise. There was a Siren tattoo on his cheek, and cheaply done at that. He was being heckled between sentences by passersby, sentences that he delivered in a deliberate drawl, as of speaking to an audience of morons. ‘Thron,’ he droned. ‘Is a god above gods!’

‘Someone better help him down then!’

‘A wise and powerful figure, half god, half mighty dragon.’

‘And he ain’t half ugly-looking, neither! Bahaha!’

Farden was confused to say the least. A pair of guards stood nearby, in Evernia colours. He was surprised to see them ignoring this preacher. Nobody would have dared do such a thing a decade or two ago. Farden considered heckling the man himself, just to be belligerent, but he thought better of it.

As Farden walked on, he quickly realised the man was not alone. His competition stood on every other street corner, each bellowing their own brand of neurotic nonsense. Every step Farden took towards the centre of the city, the louder Krauslung became. As the streets widened, so did the crowds. Taverns spilled out onto the road in colourful umbrellas and fenced areas, replete with tables and chairs, packed with drinkers soaking up their fair share of beer and the last of the day’s sun. Many of the men were smoking pipes. Farden ached to join them, but he had no coin nor pipe. He wandered on.

He soon encountered a magick market. He had scowled at them before, and he scowled at them now.
Meddlers
, he thought, eyeing the wares of a passing table. “Wigs! Fine Heifer-tail wigs that change colour with your mood!” screamed a painted sign. The man at the stall seemed to be wearing no less than four wigs, all on top of each other. The merchant must have been either a halfwit or deeply confused, for they all cycled through a various array of colours before the crowd stole Farden away.

At another stall, a woman in short skirts was trying on a brass shoe etched with flames and feathers. She put one foot on the floor and it began to vibrate, and violently too. She barely managed to get the thing off before it clattered down the street. The merchant chased after it, much to the laughter of a nearby tavern-crowd. Farden shook his head. Magick was for the trained or for the trinket, not for everyone. It angered him to see it so available, after all he had done to attain it.

Farden escaped to where a little hill rose under the cobbles, like a ripple in a grey carpet. There the buildings cleared just enough to allow a wanderer like him to stare out at the busy port. It seemed as though the water had been replaced with ships. There was barely enough room for them to manoeuvre out to open water. Krauslung truly was a hive, he thought. More so than ever. Farden then turned to gaze back at the mountains, and that was when he saw it.

He began moving almost immediately, heading directly north like an arrow with a hood. Pushing men and women aside and not caring for their complaints, Farden pressed on through the crowds and gawpers. The day was drawing its smoke-blue curtains. The night was coming, and with it the evening crowds: those off to see the twinkling of the ship-lights, those heading to the night-markets, or to a feast, those in need of pockets to pick, and those in need of ale or meat or whoring or all the above. Cities were all the same, at their hearts, fifteen years or no.

At the gates the guards were warning the passers-through that they would soon be shutting the city. As he wandered out into the field beyond, Farden gazed up at the thick walls and the giant gatehouse, every part of it bigger and deeper and taller than he remembered. The spear-tips of the portcullises, tucked up neatly in their grooves, caught the fading sunlight. Farden gazed up at the runes hammered into the stone of the arches, in the hinges of the gates, thick as a man is long. Whispers in his mind read them to him. Lock spells, slip spells, slow spells, and more… The Arkmages’ handiwork, he presumed.

Farden stepped out from under the shadow of the monstrous gates. He had to smile wryly to himself; not an hour in the city and already he was leaving it. He paused and turned to take in the span of the walls once again, and caught sight of eyes watching him intently. They blinked and looked away. Their owners slipped back into the lines filtering through the gates. Farden shook his head. They didn’t trust him quite yet, and Farden didn’t blame them.

The mage set his feet to the well-trodden dust of the road. One half of its width led people into the battlemented maw of the city, while the other half pointed north to the green hill, the brown smudge of Manesmark, and the snow-capped mountains beyond. Along the road and around the gate, tents sprang up from the grass like brightly-coloured boulders. Campfires were already roaring. Even an impromptu market had cleared a space for itself and was busy enticing last-minute buyers before they escaped north.

A clatter of feet rushed up behind him. A hand caught his arm. Farden raised a fist, but he stopped himself when he found Modren standing beside him, a concerned look on his face.

‘Farden,’ began the Undermage. His brow was furrowed like a spring field. His eyes flicked up to the Manesmark hill. ‘Where are you going?’

Farden chuckled drily. ‘Don’t trust me?’ he asked.

Modren let him go. ‘I trust you. I always have. Why don’t we go find a pair of stools in a tavern somewhere? We’ve got some grog to catch up on.’

The mention of ale set Farden’s mouth watering, but he shook his head. ‘There’s somebody I’ve got to see first,’ he said. He turned his back but Modren caught him again.

‘But evening’s falling. You must be tired.’

Farden blinked at his friend. ‘What’s wrong, Modren? What are you up to?’

It was his friend’s eyes that betrayed him the most. They flicked again to the hill and its new Spire, to the white specks at its base. Suspicion crept into his mind like a bony spider. ‘Is there something I should know?’ he asked.

Modren swallowed, then shook his head. ‘No, it’s fine.’ He released Farden a second time, and it was his turn to move away, towards the gate. ‘If you want me, there’s a tavern, on Friedja Street. It’s called the
Captain’s Folly.
I believe you know the place; it was once called the
Bearded Goat
. I’ll be there.’

Farden nodded, watching his friend leave. His narrowed gaze faded, but the spidery suspicion remained. He kept moving, feeling the ache settling into his calves and thighs as he set his feet to the hill. He knew it would be a long walk, but he willed himself into it.

And a long walk it was. Two hours it took him, with plenty of rests in between. Farden played catch with his breath while he leant against a boulder at the top of the hill. The past few weeks had beggared his muscles. If there was a god of fitness, then he must have been laughing from the firmament, thought Farden. His lungs were full of hot coals, and his armour made him feel as though bags of lead had been strapped to his limbs.

Wheezing, Farden assessed the path ahead, where the dusty road levelled out and then rolled straight down into the main thoroughfare of Manesmark. Her cobbles swallowed up the road like a cannibalistic snake.

Manesmark was a military town. It was easy to see that in the way the buildings kept each other at arm’s length, and in the angles of the alleyways and roads. It may have been a military town, but that didn’t mean it was blessed with quiet and order. Like the city behind him, it was a whisker short of crowded. Where Krauslung’s port brought travellers and sailors, Manesmark meant soldiers and mages, and they too had coin to spend on ale, women, and trinkets. Their coin had brought the innkeepers and the traders running. The town had grown fatter and taller in his absence. Manesmark may have had town boundaries but it had city dreams.

Farden wasn’t interested in Manesmark proper. His attention was firmly fixed on the little path that splintered from the dusty road and led towards a great stump of a building.

Wearing a crown of pine-wood cranes and scaffolding, the new Spire was a shadow of the old tower he could recall; a ghost pencilled in block-stone and granite. Its sleek sides were young, yet to be matured by ivy or storm. It was barely more than half-a-dozen windows high, but he could see it would be every inch the size of its predecessor. Farden pulled a sour face as he took in its lines. To him it was a grandiose gravestone. His thoughts were too tired to know what to truly make of this new building.

He was fortunately distracted by a splash of ivory white at its base. Bunting, tents, marquees, all gathered in a ring like a patch of eager daisies. People buzzed around them like urgent bees, desperate to make the most of the fading light. Farden put his hands into his pockets and followed his feet. He felt agitated. Uncomfortable.
Intrusive
sprang to mind. Nevertheless, he strode bravely into the ring of white tents, searching for her. The bunting stretched overhead flapped and flounced like bleached trout on a line. The people paid him no mind. They were too busy. Only one of them stood rock-still amidst the whirlwind of activity. A pillar of order standing on a wooden pedestal, all auburn curls and smock. Farden recognised her from a mile and a decade away. Farden couldn’t help but crack a smile, albeit a foreign little thing, dragged by its heels.

Farden waded through the crowds of servants running amok, toting barrels and packages and bundles on their weary shoulders, and walked straight towards Elessi, smile and all.

‘No, no! The bunting needs to be put up before the lanterns, otherwise what will they hang from? Yes, white bunting, not the red. This isn’t Frostfall, now is it?’

Elessi wiped away bead of sweat and took a well-earned breath. It felt like her mind had been invaded by squabbling seagulls, all chattering for her attention. So much to do! So much to think about! She sighed as a trio of servants edged past her with a table. ‘Make sure it’s clean afore you put the cloth on it!’ she told them.
Damn, but this was hard
, she thought to herself. Weeks, she had been at it now, with barely a glance at a bed, nor a moment of peace. The women and wives of the court had been helpful at least, lending their finest servants and housemen to aid her. Like a seasoned general, Elessi had deployed them in battle formation, but the description of ‘finest’ servants had left much to the imagination. They were a docile, snooty lot. She was only really a maid herself, after all. It was only due to the orders of their mistresses and the status of Elessi’s husband-to-be that made them listen at all. Thank the gods for that at least.