Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series) Read online

  ‘Better remember that face, Wartan. He ain’t one for patience!’ it hollered.

  It was quickly joined by another, a deeper, booming voice, equally as exasperating.

  ‘Especially when he’s late!’

  Farden closed his eyes and begged for patience. Before he could escape down the corridor, two sets of hands clapped him heavily on his back. Farden reluctantly turned around to face their aggravating owners.

  To say the thought of drowning these two men in a shallow puddle had occasionally crossed Farden’s mind would have been a severe understatement. He longed for the day the Duke ordered their quiet removal. Longed for it, dreamt about it. For the last ten years they had made it their mission to irritate the mage to the point of violence. That was their goal of course; they wanted to see what the mage was made of, mainly so they could try to fight whatever it was. So far, Farden had not given them the satisfaction.

  Farden raised his eyes to look at their grinning, oafish faces. If ever two men were to be chosen to be the definition of thug, these were the two for the job.

  Kint was a thin slice of a man with a narrow face. He was wiry, taller than Farden, and apparently handsome, according to the tittering castle maids. They must have been short-sighted, or desperate, or both. Kint was the smarter of the two, if that were possible, a merchant of sarcasm and the proud owner of a furious temper. Word had it that he had killed over thirty men, and had tattooed every single one of their names on his upper arms. Nobody knew for sure. He never let anybody get close enough to see. Kint and his shrill tongue had a sinister reputation in the city taverns. Worse still, nobody had ever plucked up the testicular fortitude to challenge him, on account of him being one of the Duke’s right-hand men, of course. That, and his irrefutable skill with a blade. So it was that Kint was now the bearer of an ego so big, Farden marvelled that his neck didn’t snap. He turned to his counterpart.

  Fat Forluss was exactly that. The most redeeming part of the man was his skill as the castle’s torturer, if that could be called redeeming. It was a skill anyway, though there are some skills the world can do without. Rumour had it Fat Forluss could show a man his own heart before he died. He was a huge man, constantly sweating and dabbing his damp forehead with his grotty sleeve. He sported a giant brown beard that rested over his protuberant belly and a mop of brown hair tied back in a tail behind his head. Farden tried to remember a time when he had ever seen him without his favourite toy, a nasty-looking club, the one currently hanging from his belt. The thing was a knotted limb of oak that bristled with shards of glass, bent nails, barbed wire, and a variety of other sharp and ugly things. Forlass had even given the gruesome-looking thing a name: he called it “The Fiend.”

  ‘I’ve patience enough to stomach you two,’ spat Farden.

  They stared at Farden with sneering looks, marvelling at the mud on his clothes. The mage could almost hear the cogs of their small minds whirring.

  Kint sniffed. ‘Patience that the Duke don’t share, Farden Four-Hand,’ he jibed, ogling his missing finger. It was an insult that Farden hated with a passion.

  Fat Forluss let out a low, ponderous chuckle. His belly wobbled with it. He pointed at the cloth sack that was slung over the mage’s shoulder. ‘Yeah. He ain’t happy with you. You’re two days late.’

  ‘Says who?’ Farden spat.

  ‘Says me,’ Kint butted in. He put his hands on his belt buckle. Farden could see his cocky smile fading into something much nastier.

  ‘Did you give me the job?’ countered the mage.

  Kint sniffed. ‘Duke relies on me to make sure his orders is carried out, whatever they be. That means making sure you do your job properly,’ he said. At his side, Forluss sniggered.

  Farden flung back his hood. ‘And who’s watching you, Kint? This fat lump?’ he challenged, pointing at Forluss.

  If Forluss hated anything, it was being called fat. Unfortunate, really, for a man of his size. He laid his fingers on the hilt of The Fiend. ‘Say that again, I dares you.’

  Farden’s headache was pounding now. His own fingers itched for his knife. Itched to let it loose and finally put an end to the two detestable bastards that stood glaring at him. The mage clenched his fists, eyes burning. No, he told himself. It was more trouble than it was worth. It hurt to do it, but the mage shook his head and turned around. ‘You’re not worth the time of day,’ he mumbled.

  Kint laughed again as Farden stomped down the corridor. ‘We never are.’

  ‘Coward,’ chuckled Forluss.

  It took everything Farden had to keep walking.

  Thankfully he did not have far to go. He ascended several more flights of curving stairs until he reached the main tower and the Duke’s own door. Kiltyrin’s crest had been painted on the door: a crimson three-pointed shield, a pair of crossed daggers, and a black cat. Whoever had painted the door had embedded two shards of jet into the wood to fashion the cat’s eyes. The mage looked up at the feline as he reached out to bang on its chest. Farden could have sworn the eyes moved.

  He barely had a chance to touch the wood before it was swiftly wrenched open by a sobbing man clutching a hand to his ear. Blood was leaking from the gaps between his shaking fingers. Farden moved aside to let him leave, which he did, and very quickly too. Farden shrugged, and entered the room. The Duke was standing next to a huge fireplace. He was wiping something with a white handkerchief and muttering to himself. ‘Shut that behind you,’ he said.

  ‘Another eavesdropper?’ asked the mage, pushing the door shut with the toe of his boot. He looked down. Like tiny crimson stepping stones across a sea of limestone tiles, little droplets of blood led an unswerving path towards the Duke. Farden found himself deliberately stepping on them, making little smears across the tiles as he scuffed them. At least there was less blood than last time. Kiltyrin made it his personal duty to slice an ear off anybody he or his men caught eavesdropping or gossiping. The first time, they lost the right ear. The second time, they lost the left. If they were stupid enough to be caught a third time, then they lost their balance, usually whilst standing on the ramparts of Castle Tayn’s highest tower. Farden had to admit, the servants were slow learners.

  ‘They’re like rats in a cheese-cupboard,’ hissed Kiltyrin. He tossed whatever he was wiping onto a nearby desk. The blade landed with a heavy thud and the handkerchief quickly followed. He turned and assessed the mage. ‘No matter how many traps you set, the bastards keep coming back.’

  ‘Apparently so,’ mumbled Farden.

  Kiltyrin walked over to a large window and spread his hands across the windowsill. His face glowed orange in the city lights. The years were starting to turn on the Duke; his once fire-red hair was greying at the edges, as was his trademark goatee. The stresses of long days of politics and longer nights of scheming were beginning to show in the form of creases at the corners of his eyes and lips. His once-muscular build had sagged in certain places. Simply, he was growing old. Now, for a Duke, that also meant growing desperate.

  There comes a time in every man’s life when he begins to sift through his life, sort through the countless sea of moments and nuances and try to condense it into the crash and pound of the shores of the current, to take stock of what he is. Memories, they say, make a man, but a lifetime of them, like a handful of dry sand gripped hard, sneaking through fingers, is hard to hold, fragile and finite. And, like his bones and skin, memories also die with him. So he turns to what he has in front of him, to the scars, to the weight of his purse, or the fields he still toils in, or the view from his castle window, to see what he has made of himself. A man’s final handful of years hinge on whether he is content with what he finds there, or whether he is disappointed. Kiltyrin was beginning to look from his castle window, and look hard. ‘You’re two days later than I expected,’ he began.

  ‘So Kint told me.’ Kiltyrin turned and raised an eyebrow. Farden swallowed something bitter in his throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ replied the mage.

  ‘Was it
done as I stipulated?’

  Farden rolled the sack off his shoulder and walked over to the window. He dropped it onto the floor beside the Duke’s left shoe. ‘Every last little bit.’

  Kiltyrin looked down at the sack. ‘Show me.’

  Farden knelt and gingerly prized it open. After a week on the road wrapped in a sack, the disembodied head was starting to rot. Fortunately, he had wrapped it in another bit of cloth so as to keep the smell from arousing suspicion.

  Using the tips of his fingers, Farden picked apart the cloth, grimacing as he did so. He held it open long enough so that Kiltyrin could peer inside and see the dead face staring back at him. Its eyes were milky, and its face was beginning to turn the colour of winter lichen, but he recognised it well enough. ‘And there you are, Havanth. I bet your father is reconsidering now, hmm? How I wish I could mount your face on my wall for when he next visits,’ muttered Kiltyrin, more to himself than to the mage. He looked up at the wall to the left of the window, where a herd of disembodied animals hung on plaques and hooks. They grinned at the two men standing below them, lips shrunken and stiff with resin, peeled back to show their sharp teeth. Deer, boars, sabre-cats, ice bears, even the enormous tusked face of a bastion clung to the wall. Farden had seen the Duke’s grisly collection many times before, and he wasn’t surprised to see a few new additions.

  Kiltyrin waved his hand at the sack. Wrinkling his nose, he turned back to his view. ‘Toss it in the fire before it fills my room with its stink.’

  Farden nodded and quietly obeyed. The fire in the huge brick fireplace was already roaring. Farden tossed the head, sack and all, into the fire. It landed in a fountain of sparks and a burst of flame, and the mage leant forward to hold his hands near the flames, cleansing them of the smell of the rotting head. A flame caught his finger, and he flinched away, hissing through his teeth at the unexpected pain. He heard the soft scuffing of Kiltyrin’s shoes behind him.

  ‘Something wrong, Farden?’

  Farden swiftly stood up and clenched his fist. He tried his best to ignore the pain in his finger. ‘Not at all,’ he quickly replied.

  Kiltyrin had a sly look on his face. ‘You haven’t burnt yourself, have you? Farden the old mage? Surely not. Too much of that nevermar, that’s your problem,’ he mused, sardonically.

  Farden glowered and sat down on a neighbouring chair. He turned to stare at the fire, which was now sizzling and spitting as it attempted to devour the sack and its putrescent contents. ‘Good riddance, I say.’

  ‘You look uncomfortable, Farden, why don’t you take off your cloak and your pack?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Kiltyrin shook his head. ‘Wine?’ he offered.

  Farden shook his head, even though his mouth was dust-dry. His brain was pummelling him from the inside. The tips of his fingers ached. Something about Kiltyrin’s mood had put him on edge. He had borne the brunt of these moods before. Suddenly he couldn’t wait to leave.

  ‘No of course not.’ Kiltyrin got up and went to a table, where a carafe of ruby red wine sat lingering in the light of the fire. The Duke poured himself a large glass with one hand while opening a drawer with his other. Out of the drawer came a leather bag tied tightly with a string. The coins inside it clinked as he set it on the tabletop. Farden gazed at the pouch, already dividing its contents up in his head. A quarter for the jester, some for supplies, clothes, food… Food I can do without… Kiltyrin left the pouch on the table, sipped his wine, and began to pace up and down in front of the fireplace. ‘I have another job for you,’ he said.

  Something inside Farden sank while simultaneously another part of him perked up, sending a little whisper to scuttle through his mind, a whisper of coin and something else. He tore his eyes from the leather bag. ‘Who is it this time?’

  Kiltyrin smiled contentedly. Farden might have pretended to be different, but like every other thug under his thumb, he still had his weaknesses. Kiltyrin prided himself on being able to weasel out the weaknesses of a man. It was the only thing that never changed between a peasant and a Duke, and it was the secret of how far he had come in the last ten years. Sometimes it was a wife. A son. Or daughter. Sometimes it was a field, others a house. Sometimes it was as simple as a pat on the back. But more often than not it was coin. Cold, dull, coin.

  Farden was no different.

  Kiltyrin came right out and said it. ‘Duke Wodehallow,’ he hissed quietly.

  The mage was shocked to say the least. ‘You want me to kill a Duke?’

  ‘Are you deaf, man?’

  ‘No,’ replied Farden. ‘It’s just you’ve never made a move this bold before.’

  ‘And why should that be any of your business, Farden? Tell me that. I don’t keep you around for your opinion. I keep you around because you’re good at killing things. Damn good. Don’t think that because you once had the ears of the Arkmages means you can comment on my orders.’ Farden simmered quietly in his chair. Kiltyrin sipped his wine. ‘Ah yes, you forget that I know everything about you,’ he chuckled.

  Farden shrugged. Kiltyrin liked to remind him every now and again. It was rather like reminding the man who had just fallen from a cliff how high the cliff was. ‘It doesn’t matter to me,’ he grunted.

  ‘Yes, I know all about you,’ chuckled Kiltyrin. ‘You and your story. I have eyes and ears all over Emaneska these days. Farden the outcast, the dangerous one, hiding in a Written’s skin. Arkmage Vice’s prodigy with a princess beneath the sheets. A lowly soldier who thought he saved the world… Now look at you. Farden Four-Hand. You’re a fairytale tragedy if you ask me.’

  The words grated against the mage’s ears, grit against raw skin. A decade and a half ago he would have beaten the Duke to a pulp just for daring to utter them. Now, he bit the inside of his lip, tasting his own blood. This wasn’t the first time Kiltyrin had berated him like this. It was his way of keeping the mage in place and, sadly, it worked. The years had been long under Kiltyrin’s shadow. The darkness had eroded him more than Farden was prepared to admit. ‘And as I keep telling you, that Farden died a long time ago,’ mumbled the mage.

  ‘And yet they still look for him. Yes. I thought that might surprise you. An Arka man came to me a few months ago, asking if I had ever had dealings with a Written mage. He didn’t mention your name, but you fitted his description almost perfectly, the same as when I first found you, the year of the Battle. Fancy that.’

  Farden scrunched up his face. ‘And what did you say?’

  Kiltyrin rolled his eyes. ‘Relax. Do you think you’d be here today if I had said yes?’

  The mage shook his head.

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t. Why would I give up my best assassin? My favourite killer?’

  Farden sat very still whilst Kiltyrin paced back and forth some more. He stared at the fire for a moment. ‘What was his name, the man they sent?’ he finally asked.

  ‘I didn’t catch it. I doubt he was anyone important,’ Kiltyrin smirked behind the lip of his wine glass.

  ‘Oh.’ Farden picked dirt from his nails. He didn’t care anyway. It changed nothing.

  ‘To business then,’ announced the Duke.

  Kiltyrin walked over to the table and snatched up the leather bag. Farden quickly stood up. The Duke couldn’t help but sneer. He flicked the bag as if to throw it, but then changed his mind at the very last second. The mage flinched, and then glared. ‘Look at you,’ chuckled the Duke. ‘I’ve had you figured out since we first met at the Bartering. Part of me hoped that under my wing you might have shone, grown, blossomed even, set yourself apart from the rest of the brainless thugs outside that door. I hoped a man like you might actually be different from the drunkards and the brawlers. You could have become my right-hand man. A lord in your own right. But instead all I see in the man slouching before me is just another blade for hire, a drug addict, a beggar on a street with his hand out for charity, just like the rest. Look at you, eyeing this,’ he jiggled the leather bag in his ha
nd. ‘It’s all you want, isn’t it?’

  Farden took a step forward and for the tiniest of moments the Duke’s contemptuous expression cracked just a little. Only for a moment. Farden pulled his black hood over his throbbing head. ‘What I’d like to know is, why does everybody think it’s their right to tell me what’s wrong with me?’

  ‘Because there’s barely any right in you to mention,’ he spat. ‘Now, are you going to kill the Duke, or have you had enough? Hmm?’ The Duke waggled the pouch of coins.

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘You’ve always had a choice, Farden. Keep doing what I say or go back to living in a hovel in the hills like a leper, with no coin and no nevermar. Who knows, maybe you could take up holding passersby at knifepoint? I imagine that would be easy to turn your hand to.’

  ‘Unlike you, I still have morals to which I abide.’ Did he though, really?

  That made Kiltyrin grin. ‘Do you now? An assassin, with morals. Tell me, which of us in this room is the murderer?’

  Who’s more of a murderer, the one who holds the knife, or the one who pays him to hold it? The mage thought, but he said nothing. ‘I want four times the coin,’ he spat.

  ‘Two times.’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Twice. One now. One when you return. That should keep you in your beloved nevermar for at least a few months.’

  Farden bit his lip again, and stiffly held out a hand. He soon found a heavy pouch of coin occupying it. ‘Give me your orders then,’ he muttered.

  Kiltyrin waved his hand. ‘On the table, near the door.’