Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series) (29 page)

The pine tree was a monstrous, lonely thing. They had spied it twenty miles back. Such a huge and vertical thing was hard to miss on such a flat, barren wasteland.

It must have been a practical joke of nature, or of some wisecrack god, to put such a giant tree in such an empty place. The tree must have been a hundred feet tall at least, leaning at a slight angle to the east like a solitary tower with questionable foundations. It was a pine tree through and through, with a sharp point and gently sloping sides. Its needle foliage was a dark, dark evergreen, almost black in the places where the sun couldn’t reach, and it was bristling with gnarled, mahogany cones the size of a man’s head. A few that had fallen littered the dusty earth like forgotten boulders.

They had smelled the tree from a mile away; it gave the wasteland breeze the sickly-sweet smell of thick, dripping resin and warm wood. It mingled surprisingly well with the sulphurous stench of the two daemons lounging against its enormous trunk.

Samara marched towards them eagerly, while Lilith did her best to keep up. She counted her blessings as she walked. There weren’t many to count. A spot of shade, courtesy of this lonely tree. Maybe a rest. Some food if she was lucky. Having the daemons in plain sight rather than having them explode out of a campfire. Thin comfort, Lilith sighed quietly to herself.

When she arrived at the tree, Samara was just getting up from her knees. The daemons smiled when they saw Lilith. They had taken to goading her mercilessly about her abilities as a seer, her age, her slowness, and, most disturbingly, how rotten she would taste when they finally ate her. It was the subject of her impending doom, and that subject alone, that was the reason behind her dark mood, and her crumbling resolve.

Hokus rubbed his hands. ‘Well, Valefor, if it isn’t our favourite fate-juggler. You almost looked surprised to see us.’

‘Never trust a seer who’s surprised to see you, Hokus.’

Valefor ‘How right you are, brother.’

‘I’m surprised to see you standing still and waiting for us for a change, rather than ruining my campfires,’ Lilith replied acidly. At a sharp look from Samara, she quickly added, ‘my lords.’

The two daemons shrugged at that. She was poor sport today.

Samara smoothed the dust from her knees. Her hair was reflecting the green tinge of the light falling through the pine. It gave her a haunted look. ‘How are we doing?’ she asked. The question, so high-pitched in her young voice, veritably begged for approval. Samara couldn’t help but notice it herself. She inwardly cringed.

Valefor snorted smoke. ‘Terribly,’ he said. ‘You are days behind the others, and they are supposed to be chasing you.’

‘It will not do,’ Hokus shook his head. He sounded angry. ‘Our plans cannot wait for mortal feet to tread. He grows impatient.’

Samara nodded. She couldn’t help but feel her burden grow even heavier at the mention of
him.
‘Well…’ she ventured.

‘Well what?’ Hokus snapped, biting off a flash of flame in his blast-furnace mouth.

‘Is there a faster way we could travel? A ship? A dragon? Anything?’

‘She catches on quickly, does this one.’

‘For her age.’

‘She has our blood in her, after all,’ Hokus nodded. He looked to the south and east, where a faint strip of darkness smudged the horizon. Mountains, cloud, or a forest maybe. ‘The growing magick is calling to the dark places of this world. There are things burrowed in the earth that escaped our fate. Things that have been forgotten and lost. Some have already answered its call. They head north, like you.’

‘
Things
?’ asked Lilith, unnerved.

Valefor sniggered. ‘We have a few ideas.’

‘Like what?’ asked Samara, intrigued.

‘Walk until the sun sets. Make a fire. There is a hill, to the north. We will meet you there,’ instructed Hokus. Lilith inwardly groaned. The daemons made scraping noises as they hoisted themselves off the tree. Where they had been leaning, great char marks and resinous bruises tarnished the red-brown trunk.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘The magick has its call. We have ours.’

‘It has been centuries since the presence of daemons have been felt. Already, creatures are coming to pay their respects.’

‘Choosing sides, so to speak,’ Valefor smiled as he sent a pine cone tumbling with a vicious kick. The parts that didn’t wither into splinters soared high into the open grey-blue of the barren sky. ‘Nature is always first to choose. That’s why the gods were so eager to master it.’

Hokus nodded. ‘Even now I can hear the rustling of rocks, the chattering of teeth and nails, drawing near.’ Lilith stared out into the wilds, as if she could spot these chattering, rustling beings. There was nothing to be seen, but the daemon’s words still sent a little shiver up her arched spine. ‘Sunset,’ he ordered. Samara bowed as they turned to walk away, then instantly began snapping twigs from low-lying branches.

Lilith waited until the daemons had gone. For some reason, they had taken to walking instead of disappearing in a cloud of smoke and ash. She wasn’t sure which she found more disturbing, the power of their spells, or the casual, brazen way they plodded across the wastes, leaving burning footprints in their wake.

‘How can you trust them?’ Lilith sighed. She didn’t care to whisper. If the daemons could hear the chattering and rustling of unnamed horrors from gods knew how many miles away, then no amount of whispering would help her.

Samara shook her head. ‘Not this again, Lilith,’ she hissed. ‘I told you, they’re flesh and blood.’

‘Fire and ash, more like,’ replied the seer. ‘They have it in for me. I can tell. It’s fine for you. They need you. You’re useful. I’m surplus to requirements. They’ll be rid of me as soon as it bloody suits ‘em.’

Samara shrugged. ‘Not my problem,’ she said.

Lilith scowled. ‘No, ‘course it ain’t. You’re fine.’

Samara dropped her bundle of sticks and turned around. Her hands were glittering with frost, turning an artic blue. She pointed a finger clad in ice. ‘You sound as if you want out, Lilith? Had a change of heart? Going back on your promises to Vice?’

Lilith couldn’t help but look back the way they had come. She licked her dry lips.

‘No,’ she said, quietly, defeated. Fate was a hopeless beast. She cursed herself again, for the hundredth time that week. Why had she ever looked? ‘No, I ain’t. Just seems as though I’m getting the worst of it, is all.’

‘Well,’ Samara began, but she trailed off before she could think of anything to say. She let the ice on her hand melt away and went back to her stick-gathering.

All things considered, Lilith needn’t have kept pace, but she did so to keep Samara happy, or quiet. One of the two. In all honesty, she still cared about the girl’s fate, even though she had come to realise that her own was truly sealed. She resigned it begrudgingly to some sort of motherly instinct. She had spat a great globule of phlegm in the dust when that thought crossed her mind.

As the sun died its slow death, they came to a low and lonely barrow mound, ringed by a crown of brambles. Samara hacked her way through them with her hands and a couple of spells, clearing the way for Lilith. She strode to the top of the barrow and stamped the top of it as Lilith had taught her. Even in the wildest parts of the world, barrows weren’t very common. They were hasty graves built for the most hated of enemies. It was a true punishment, as it refused the dead the pyre they needed to set their souls free, to set them on the path to the other side. A burial in the cold earth forced a soul to roam the wilds as a ghost, pleading with the living to burn their remains and unshackle them. It was a cruel art, saved for the cruellest.

The barrow seemed sound enough. Most were old and had a tendency to cave in under any sort of weight. That sort of thing wasn’t a danger for most. Even the hardiest of explorers seldom dared to camp atop a barrow. Ghosts could be bitter beasts.

As Lilith began to build the pine twigs and branches into a fire, Samara walked in circles around the barrow, looking for the hulking shapes of Valefor and Hokus. They were nowhere to be seen. ‘Is there any food?’ she asked, as her stomach rumbled audibly.

Lilith nodded and the girl came to sit by her side. She dug through her pack as Samara put her hands to the fire. She soon had the dry twigs crackling, and the cool air began to smell like burning resin.

Lilith turfed a cloth-wrapped packet onto the dust. The cloth was cold to the touch; another of Samara’s spells. ‘The last of the venison,’ she announced. Samara had brought down a stag during their journey through the Össfen foothills. That was the thing about fire spells: not only could they catch dinner, but they could also cook it at the same time.

Samara unwrapped the meat and dangled a slice of it over the flames. If there was one thing she had learnt from her years traipsing the wilderness as a child, it was that she hated cold meat. Lilith was not so picky, and she began to wolf down her slice with alacrity. The day’s trudging had given her a powerful hunger.

As Lilith ate, Samara pondered the silence. Walking made the brain churn, and the last ten miles had made hers think about Lilith. The momentary shred of pity she had felt for the old crone earlier had soon blossomed into a full-blown tapestry of sympathy. Samara wasn’t used to such a thing. She’d tried to ignore it, but it stuck fast. It confused her. It made her uncomfortable.

Once she had gobbled down her venison, she rubbed her hands on her cloak and cleared her throat. ‘So,’ she said, lunging into the question she had wanted to ask since the pine tree. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

Lilith looked up, a little surprised. She was busy sewing up a hole in her sleeve that a bramble had ripped. ‘I might ask the very same of you, girl. Can’t remember the last time you asked me such a thing.’

Samara just shrugged. ‘I want to know. There’s something wrong with you, that’s for sure.’

‘Such tact, girl.’ Lilith shook her head, and coughed up two words she too had been nursing since the pine. ‘I’m dying,’ she blurted.

‘So? You’ve been dying for a long time,’ replied Samara, matter-of-factly. There was no venom in her words. Just plenty of fact.

Lilith jabbed herself with her needle as she turned to scowl at her. ‘Not in that way, girl, not in the way that we’re all dyin’, in the way that I am
going
to die. Soon enough.’

Samara cupped her chin with her hand. ‘Is this about Hokus and Valefor again?’

‘No,’ Lilith snorted. She knew the end, and it was not at the end of their claws.

‘Then what? How?’

‘Don’t matter. Just that it happens soon,’ she muttered. ‘Nothin’ to cry about. Made my peace with it,’ she lied.

Samara shuffled around to the other side of the fire so she could face the old woman. The fire did different things to each of their faces. Samara leant forward to watch the light play amongst the cracks and canyons of Lilith’s wizened skin. Lilith looked up and watched how the flames softened Samara’s, how it smoothed it and made her look even younger than she already was. How it turned her eyes a russet orange.

Samara shook her head, remembering several wine-addled evenings of Lilith muttering to herself. ‘So it is true. You did look at your own death.’

Lilith looked into the flames and said nothing. That silence last for almost half an hour. Samara didn’t bother to press her.

As the darkness grew thick and oily around them, Lilith began to make herself comfortable. With grunts betraying how sore she truly was, she wriggled around until she had found a hollow in the dust, and then positioned her pack under her head. All the while she kept staring into the flames. It was only when she pulled a small flask from her pocket that Samara piped up. ‘Do you think that’s wise? They’ll be here soon. We’ll be moving on,’ she said, her voice sounding loud against the crackling of the pine twigs.

Lilith grunted some more. ‘I ain’t drinking myself to a stupor, girl, just warming myself up. S’cold on these wastes,’ she replied. There was a musical popping sound as she thumbed aside the cork of the flask. The sharp tang of mörd escaped.

Samara didn’t feel the cold. Her magick was growing stronger with every mile they travelled northwards. She could feel it filling her veins again as before. It kept her thoroughly warm. She watched as Lilith took a few sips from the flask, winced, and took a few more. Her wrinkled lips puckered with the taste of the stuff.

‘Want a bit?’ Lilith noticed how the girl was staring. She waved the flask in her direction, mindful to keep it away from the fire. It was a well-known fact that the only thing that could start a fire faster than a fire mage was a drop of mörd.

Samara wrinkled her nose, but took the flask anyway. She sniffed its contents and then immediately regretted it.

‘It’ll set fire to your belly,’ Lilith coaxed. She had never let the girl drink before, but what’s the point of knowing the pyre is drawing near and not letting a few morals slip?

‘You say that like it’s a good thing.’

‘Trust me, girl. Sometimes it’s the only thing that let’s you know you’re still alive.’

Samara felt another little pang of pity at that reply. Damn emotions. Samara shrugged and took a swig. It probably wasn’t the best idea to take such a bold mouthful, but she did nonethless, and it was all she could do to swallow it before it burnt a hole in her mouth, never mind her belly. She coughed as she tried to take a breath.