Free Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series) by Ben Galley Page A

any longer, a puff of flame burst from his palm. It was a little sputter, a cough of fire, something a candle might be proud of but nothing more. To Farden it was a fountain of flame. An onslaught. He clenched his hand as the magick burnt him, and bit his lip. He felt guilty, then, for a moment, for trying to resurrect his magick, after all those years trying to kill it.
    But maybe Gossfring was right. ‘Desperate times and all that,’ he told himself, thinking of the door in the Arkathedral. Elessi was still in danger. He hadn’t saved her yet. Besides , Farden lectured to himself, perhaps it would be different . Perhaps he wasn’t a curse any more. Perhaps he was something new, or something very old.
    In the darkness, there might have been a smile on his face. Hero . He had been called that before.
    He had forgotten how much he liked the sound of it.

Chapter 4
    “Ships have a curious relationship with the sea. The sea both loathes and loves them. A fickle mistress, she. Caressing the keel one minute, dashing the bow against the rocks the next. That is why we must pray to Njord, and pray that his sea remains a kind lady.”
    From the diary of Captain Rasserfel, in the year 801
    ‘U p!’ the sergeant bellowed. A score of sweating bodies pushed themselves off the scrubbed deck. ‘Down!’ came the shout, and the bodies kissed the wood with their noses. ‘Halfway up and hold it!’ The sergeant swaggered through the rows and lines, tapping arms with his boots. He could see their arms shivering with the tension. ‘Hold it!’ he yelled in their ears.
    At the far corner of the group, one of the men sagged and crumpled to the floor. The sergeant cast him a look, mouth poised to bellow, and then thought better of it. He turned away and let his lungs loose on the others instead. ‘And up again!’ he shouted. At the edge of his eye, he spied the man slowly but surely pushing himself back up.
    It was the mage. The one who had come aboard at Krauslung with the Arkmage and the Written. The one who had spewed his guts down the port side not a minute out of the harbour. He was a sweaty wreck if the sergeant had ever seen one, a feeble and exhausted mess, but by Njord, he had the determination of an iron bar.
    ‘Up! Down! Up! Down!’ the sergeant yelled his orders in quick succession. The soldiers and sailors bobbed up and down like flotsam on a wave. In the corner, the man crumpled to the deck again. The sergeant pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

    Farden was tired. His body was screaming. His mind was the only thing still capable of moving. He thrust at the deck with his palms but his body refused to move. He rolled onto his back and lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. Somebody grabbed his wrist and dragged him out of the exercise squad and into the sweet shade underneath the bulwark. He squinted up at his saviour. His uncle.
    ‘Tsk. Know your limits, boy,’ Tyrfing tutted, as he passed him a wooden cup of cold water.
    ‘You haven’t called me that in years,’ Farden wheezed. ‘When are people going to learn that I really, really hate being called that?’
    Tyrfing shrugged and turned back to watch the others train.
    It was a fresh morning, the kind that makes the teeth ache if breathing in too sharply. The kind where the sun sits behind a veil of constant misty cloud, teasingly warm. The kind where the sea is a lazy blanket of grey-blue, where ships rely on wind mages and the momentum of the day before. A day neither here nor there. Half-asleep and plodding. Just like their progress.
    The sails had pushed them far in the night, past the eastern shadow of Albion and the western reaches of Halȏrn and Emaneska, almost into the Rannoch Sound.
    Farden lay on the deck and watched the sails puff and shudder. When the ship leant the right way, he could even see a lone and stoic figure in the crow’s nest, eyes fixed on the east.
    When his lungs had quenched their exhausted fire, Farden sat himself up