Read Online Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series) by Ben Galley - Free Book Online

looked back at the open sea behind them, and saw the squall was hot on their tail. He could already see the lightning flashing at its heart.
    Lerel was beside him, bent over a table with a compass and a dagger. She stared at the maps closely, prodding their script and symbols, fingers twitching with her lips. Occasionally she would call out directions and warnings to Nuka, who was glued to the wheel. He had plied this channel many a time before, in many other ships, but this time was the first the Waveblade had tasted its emerald fury.
    Wave by wave, they drew closer to the cliffs. All the sails but a skinny few had been left to catch the wind. The closer they got to the cliffs, the faster the water around them seemed to flow, as if they were stuck in a river, rather than a sea.
    Less than half a mile from the rocks, the Waveblade turned her starboard flank to the sheer face of the cliff and the sailors held their breaths as a narrow dagger of rock sidled by, casual as a statue, too close for comfort.
    ‘Port two notches. The island is close!’ Lerel hollered.
    ‘I see it,’ Nuka barked, as the keen edge of the cliff drew back to reveal a tall column of stone, built like a tall, ochre turret in the sea. Farden felt his jaw drop at the sight of it. Then the noise hit him, the noise of a million cliff-birds greeting them. It was deafening, a cackling, piercing roar like no other, only made worse by the hiss and rumble of the waves. He could see Lerel’s mouth moving as she yelled another direction, but her voice was lost in the cacophony.
    Guillemots, swippets, cormorants, puffins, foamsnatchers, rosklints, terns, and seagulls, they came in whirlwinds and waves, smothering the ship and her tall masts. They swarmed the deck, squawking and screeching and cawing and as they swooped and dove. A few snagged in the rigging, and had to be clubbed into silence before they frayed the taut ropes. The Waveblade surged on, unabated. She was poised for something, Farden could feel it.
    ‘Mages!’ yelled Tyrfing, from the port side. The mages emerged from their hiding places in the crew and began to throw random fireballs into the thick flocks. It worked like a charm. The birds, terrified by the fire, beat a hasty retreat, fleeing back to the sheer walls of their strange island, hissing and screeching from afar.
    ‘Five notches to starboard, Captain! Watch for the Bodkins!’
    ‘Aye!’ acknowledged Nuka.
    ‘The what?’ blurted Farden, as he remembered his tongue. He darted past Lerel and looked over the port side. His stomach clenched with what he saw: sharp rocks jutting out of the water at all angles, barely a few feet from the hull.
    ‘The Bodkins,’ Lerel was shouting. ‘Needle-like rocks that lead a path to the Bitch!’
    ‘The what ?!’ Farden turned back to her.
    Lerel jabbed her dagger at the towering column of rock that stood directly in their path. ‘The Bitch! That great thing! Now shut up! I’m concentrating on not getting us killed.’
    Farden strangled the railing with his hands. Memories of the Sarunn made his teeth chatter. He winced as he spied a tooth of rock, unsheathed by a falling wave. It curved upwards like a fang. An old anchor was wrapped around it, just below its dagger-edge. A gravestone to some lost vessel. Farden was close to crying out when he heard the rattle of the wheel. The ship kicked, and they slid past it with only inches to spare. ‘Why’d we even come this way?’ he hissed, swearing under his breath.
    The bosun, a man Farden had heard being referred to as Roiks, stood at Nuka’s side. Hearing the mage’s cursing, he turned to grin at him. ‘Pickles the mind, don’t it!? But by Njord’s festering bollocks, you’ll see. Ain’t a current like it in the seas!’
    ‘Steady!’ Nuka shouted over the roaring of the waves, the wind, and the seabirds. It was then, leaning far out over the railing in the clutch of the most morbid curiosities, that Farden saw the method in Nuka’s