Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series) (25 page)

Farden stepped in. He grabbed the old Siren’s hands and shook them gently. ‘The finest and the fastest, which one is he?’

‘It’s a
she
,’ the man seemed to drift out of his frightened reverie a little. ‘Always a she.’

‘Well, which one is it?’

The man turned to his hawks, all three of them, and stroked the head of the middle one. She was a small beast, a darker shade than the others, with a white chest and two thin feathers, like that of heron’s, trailing from her head and down across her back. Her hood covered her eyes, its bells jangled as she moved. ‘She is.’

Tyrfing finished his message and rolled it up without even waiting for the ink to dry. ‘We’ll use her then,’ he ordered, holding out the little scroll like a flaming poker.

The old man hesitated. ‘Dragons,’ he bit his lip. ‘They’ve been catching my hawks. They eat them.’

Farden pushed him gently towards the table. ‘She’s better off out there than in here!’

‘Quickly!’ Tyrfing waved the scroll.

There was a scream from behind them as Eyrum missed his mark, but only by a little. The following screams, those of the Siren finishing his work, were unmentionable. The three bystanders tried their level best to ignore them.

‘Fine!’ said the Siren, as he deftly twirled a scrap of twine around the hawk’s leg. He lifted her hood and fastened its bell to her other foot.

‘Farden, the window if you please!’ Tyrfing yelled. Farden swiped a smouldering book from the bloody floor; a heavy tome that had a cover made of polished mahogany. He looked at the row of blackened windows behind the table.

‘Any in particular?’ he asked.

‘Just throw the godsdamned book!’ came the startlingly loud reply.

Farden threw it as hard as his tired arms could. There was a sharp crack as the book met the windowpane. Only one could win, and the book sailed out into the grey, leaving a gaping hole and shaft of bright light in its wake. The fog was fading indeed. The old Siren ran to the window, hawk on his arm. ‘A ship, you say?’ he asked Farden.

‘That’s right!’

The Siren whispered something urgent in the bird’s ear and then held his arm up to the smashed window. ‘Fly!’ he shouted, and the hawk sprang from his arm. Gone. Snatched by the air.

Farden turned to his uncle. ‘What about us?’

‘We stay until the Sirens are safe, and then we make for the
Waveblade
.’

Farden flashed him a look that wore the frayed edges of disbelief. With a grunt, he picked up the Grimsayer. ‘You make it sound so easy.’

‘I’m learning from you.’

The two mages quickly made their way back to the back of the library with Eyrum and a gang of soldiers in tow. The smoke and heat were becoming unbearable now. The fires were spreading at a rapid rate, leaping from shelf to precious shelf. Most of the clansmen had all but retreated, lost in the maze of burning defences. A pitiful few Sirens limped out of the thick smoke to join them, Shivertread and a few remaining dragons in tow. One of the other dragons had fallen. Another was still fighting.

The sound of hammering fell silent as they reached the rear of the library. Now the escapees were pouring into the tunnel as fast as they could. The smoke vied with the dust for a space in their lungs. Coughing was rife; the sharp slapping of its echoes against the freshly carved rock sounded like a macabre applause, congratulating their escape.

Only Eyrum, Farden, and Tyrfing stayed behind. They were busy dealing with a few clansmen who had stumbled upon the escape. They fought them savagely, though the smoke made their ferocious movements seem dreamlike and sluggish. Eyrum could barely see the tip of his hammer, just its steel shaft and the whorls in the smoke it made. Every other moment he felt the wet thud as it collided with something unlucky. Tyrfing and Farden were his flanks. One cast sharp, deadly spells at anything that dared come his way. The other had his bloodied steel, staying still with one foot on a giant of a book.

Farden spat blood. A fist had caught him in the mouth. ‘We need to cover their escape, otherwise we’ll be fighting all the way down the mountainside!’

Tyrfing looked up from his casting. ‘What would you suggest?’

‘You two are the ones with the hammer and the spells. Cave the tunnel’s mouth in,’ Farden snapped.

‘And what about us?’

Farden shrugged. ‘Windows?’

Tyrfing looked horrified. ‘It’s sheer mountain out there.’

‘Not all of it. It’s scree below these. I saw when the hawk escaped.’

There was a roar somewhere in front of them, and in the grey darkness of the library they saw a great explosion of flame. Dark shapes were momentarily painted against the smoke. Many, many, dark shapes, the light turning them ghoulish and twisted. The three dashed to the nearest window.

‘You’d best be right, nephew.’

‘Check for yourself!’

Eyrum uttered a guttural roar as he took his hammer to the nearest windowpane. Light poured into the alcove, showering them and the dirty floor. The men shielded their eyes, wincing. The colour of the blood and gore that drenched their clothes and skin was suddenly very, very red.

Whilst Tyrfing put his fist to the rock arch of the tunnel, whispering intently to himself, Eyrum and Farden looked over the splintered edge of the glass. ‘See? Scree.’

‘
Sheer
scree,’ replied Eyrum pointedly.

‘Scared?’ asked Farden. He was.

‘Never!’ Eyrum laughed then. Such an easy laugh. Farden didn’t care if it was false. It gave him a little courage.

The ear-splitting sound of cracking rock made them duck for cover. Tyrfing’s spell had broken the wall in a hundred different places. All it took was a tap from his dusty knuckle, and the mouth of the escape tunnel imploded, sealing itself solid with a puff of thick grey dust. The Sirens were safe. ‘Ready?’ he shouted.

Eyrum nodded. ‘As we’ll ever be. My suggestion is not to look.’

‘I’ll take that advice.’ Tyrfing nodded. He stretched out a hand towards the black window. A gust of wind sighed around them and blew the remaining glass and dust out into the air.

As the three readied themselves to jump, Tyrfing turned to his nephew. Farden had sheathed his sword, and was now holding only the blood-spattered Grimsayer, cradled in both arms. ‘I don’t envy you, Farden.’

‘Why’s that?’ he asked.

Tyrfing pointed to the cumbersome tome. ‘With the weight of that book, nephew, you’ll drop like a boulder.’

‘Well, taking into consideration your iron stubbornness, and Eyrum’s sheer mass, I think I will take my chances,’ he replied acidly, a little smile pulling up his cheek. There was something of a chuckle from Eyrum. How odd it was, that the more dire the situation, the more fun they had to poke at it. Such was the way of dire situations. Why make them even direr? Farden was about to place a wager when they heard the zip and clatter of arrows behind them.

‘Well, can’t stand around chatting all day!’ he yelled as he sprinted forward. He took the window-ledge in one great leap, and sailed out into the fading grey of the morning light like a most ambitious boulder indeed.

When a person jumps from any great height, there is a moment where the world lies to them. It whispers to them a great and awful falsehood. It comes the very second that feet slide from rock or ledge, and lasts just that brief moment before reality takes grip. That moment where wind and treacherous momentum collude to convince the person, miraculously, that they can fly; that they could do this all along, yet never knew. It is that thin sliver of a moment before the heart begins to climb into the throat, and the face, previously grinning wide with downright elation at this discovery, begins to fall as fast as the rest of the body. Gravity strikes. The lie becomes apparent. Hope falls like a rock.

Farden enjoyed his brief lie. He had to admit it; he fell hook, line, and sinker for it. His mighty leap had thrown him far from the mountainside, and for one sweet, grasping handful of seconds, he flew, legs pedalling frantically through the cold, misty air, one arm clutched to the Grimsayer while the other flapped like a wing. What a sight he must have made.

Then the realisation came crashing down. Literally.

Farden fell like the weight he was. Groping at the sky was as futile as trying to catch the moon, but he tried anyway, clawing and scratching at nothing as he plummeted. He heard the grunting
whump!
of the two landing beneath him. A flash of pride came suddenly as he realised he would have won his wager, and then the impact jolted it from his mind.

His legs crumpled and his arse took most of the landing. Luckily, his cloak had bunched up in the fall, and managed to make quite a cushion between his rump and the scree. The severe incline helped too. He almost lost the Grimsayer as he bounced and rolled.

The three cried out as they slid and bounced down the slope, still falling, but being connected to the ground didn’t make it seem so dangerous. Farden grit his teeth and stuck his legs out like tree roots, but they skittered over the top of the scree, futile against the speed he was now gathering. He could do little but grimace, and watch the world slide upwards to meet him.

Ahead of him, Tyrfing met a rock and flew over it with a yell and a crash of armour on the other side. Farden rolled to avoid the same fate. Eyrum was sliding down on his belly, whether by clever design or sheer unfortunate luck, Farden didn’t know. He was somehow steering with his hammer, using its weight to slow him down. Farden’s eyes flicked to the Grimsayer and considered doing the same, but thought better of it.

Arrows began to ping and ricochet off the rocks and scree around them. Farden ducked as he heard one flit past his ear. It sliced a line across his cheek and buried itself deep in the cover of the thick Grimsayer. ‘That was too close!’ Farden shouted to himself, a little wide-eyed. He could have sworn the book muttered something cantankerous, but with the roar of the sliding rock and wind it was too hard to tell. The arrows faded as quickly as they had come; the men were falling too fast to offer much of a target. Farden felt as if they were already halfway down the mountain. Despite the ripping of the scree and the pain in his legs, he almost let his grimace turn into a grin.

Almost.

From below, Tyrfing flashed him a quick look. ‘Erm, Farden?!’ he yelled.

‘What?!’

Tyrfing could only point.

Below them and fast-approaching, was a ledge jutting out of the scree at a sharp angle. It wasn’t so sharp as to stop them, but sharp enough to cut the slope in twain like a black, granite saw stuck halfway through a grey bone. The real heart-tugging, aspect of it was that the slope appeared to fall away soon after it, into complete and utter thin air. A cliff. No doubt about it.

‘Shit,’ was all Farden could stutter.

Eyrum slammed his hammer shaft into the rock in a spray of shale and pebble. Tyrfing’s hands shimmered with green light, tugging at the passing rocks. Farden breathed a sigh of relief as he drew level with them, but as he slid quickly passed them, he began to flail and shout. He tried to dig his heels in but his knees buckled under the strain and speed. He reached out to Tyrfing with his spare hand, but he was already too far past him. Tyrfing’s eyes grew wide as he watched his nephew plummet toward the ledge. Tyrfing tried to pull him back with a spell, but he didn’t have anything to brace himself with. Those sorts of spells, even for Tyrfing, needed sure footing and solid ground. ‘Farden!’ he yelled, futilely, as if his words could halt him. He grabbed and pulled, but he just fell faster.

‘Uncle!’ Farden shouted. His mouth became a silent scream. Eyrum tried to reach him with the head of the hammer, but he was too far ahead.

Farden reached the ledge. There was a sickening moment as the sound of Farden’s fall changed from the hissing roar of tumbling gravel to the solid scrape of rock, then cold silence as he was tossed up and out into thin air. Once again the world lied as he hovered at the apex, just before gravity bit into him. Farden had somehow managed to turn in mid-air, and he threw a wide-eyed and ashen look back at his still-sliding friends. To his credit, he was still hugging the Grimsayer.

And then he fell, with a scream so high-pitched he would later regret it with blushing cheeks. It was partly why he didn’t hear the keen whine of golden wings above him. The other reason was due to the other sad fact of falling: that the faller will almost always look down to see his doom rushing up to great him. So it was that Farden’s eyes were glued to the jagged fingers of rock below him, completely oblivious to the huge golden dragon swooping down to snatch him from his fate. It was only when Towerdawn’s sharp talons slid under his arms did he snap out of his fear-stricken reverie. He felt a lurching jolt as the dragon flared and beat his wings. It wasn’t a moment too soon; Farden managed to spit on a jagged tooth of cheated rock as Towerdawn pulled him up. He flashed the dragon a joyous grin. ‘Not this time,’ he whispered to himself. The Grimsayer in his arms rustled in the wind. It sounded like the book was sighing.

‘We are not out of danger yet, mage!’ boomed Towerdawn from above. He took a breath and blew a great trumpeting roar. Farden heard the voices of other dragons somewhere above and behind him echo the call. He looked up to see Tyrfing and Eyrum in similar positions. Eyrum was tightly held in the grip of the big blue dragon from the great hall, while Tyrfing was in the grip of lithe Shivertread. He swayed from side to side as the charcoal dragon swooped and flapped, a little less practised than the other dragons.

It was then that he heard a different sort of roaring. Farden threw a quick look over his shoulder and spied a multitude of dark shapes chasing them, blowing fire and smoke as they flew.

Towerdawn growled. ‘Hold on tight, Farden.’

‘And the same to you, Old Dragon!’ Farden gulped as Towerdawn hugged the jagged mountainside, wings flat, limbs and mage tucked close to his scaly underbelly. It was all Farden could do to lift his legs to his chest and hope for the best. He could have sworn that his cloak slapped the railing of a balcony as they rocketed by, stomach-churningly close to the ground.