Blackmark (The Kingsmen Chronicles #1): An Epic Fantasy Adventure Page 23

  The Alranstone began to pulse faster, moving waves of heat through Elohl. And then faster yet, acquiring the rhythm of a steadily-beating heart. Until he moved in an ocean of fire, pulled by its ebb and flow. And when Elohl thought he could take no more, it suddenly synched perfectly to his own heartbeat.

  A blaze of scalding heat flooded Elohl, obliterating. As it did, he saw in his thoughts a man standing before him upon the stone, strong and tall with corded sinew for muscle, his eyes like umber flames. He wore little upon his golden-tanned skin, leather breeches and soft kneeboots only, his lion-red mane braided back from his face in the Highlander fashion of thick cables. A long keshar-claw pendant with a golden tip, inset with gold sigils, dangled on a fine golden chain about his neck. Fur-lined leather bracers graced his forearms, and a small ruby set in gold was pierced into the lobe of his right ear. A complex pattern of sigils tattooed in red and white spread over his chest and up over his shoulders, a mountain and five stars in black at their center. But the form of the mountain was different, not the Kingsmount at all Inked upon this man’s chest, but some other mountain entirely.

  The man in his mind grinned, his umber eyes hard, a feral glint to them like a wildcat. His searing gaze was steady upon Elohl, holding all the command of a battle-lord, his face chiseled and ancient though still of middle years. White had begun to streak the bright russet at his temples, and though he had only a short stubble, white had begun to dapple that, too. His presence pressed into Elohl, undeniable, unforgiving, blistering. You have a lot to learn about the world, Rennkavi.

  Elohl furrowed his brow, fighting to reply through the ravaging heat that filled him. Who are you? What is Rennkavi?

  The man tossed back his head in a roaring laugh, at once cultured and rogue. He crouched before Elohl, reaching out battle-scarred fingers. Your community has not confirmed you. But I confirm you now. My confirmation is all you need. My name is Hahled Ferrian, Brother King of the Highlands. And you are Rennkavi of the Tribes.

  Rennkavi? What do you mean? Tribes?

  The man pressed his palm hard against Elohl’s skin, right at his Inking. Elohl gasped, feeling fingers of blazing light pressing through his body. Directly into his heart, the light rippled and rolled, flooding his flesh, searing his wounds, not fire anymore but a heat that glowed. A heat that dove deep into the glaciers that filled Elohl, consuming them, evaporating them in a rushing of wind and steam that left nothing in its wake but illumination. Like he’d been filled by the power of the white spire he’d seen so long ago, bliss filled him, radiating. Lifting his mind, it caused his heart to crack open, shedding all ice from that, too, until he was nothing but peace.

  Elohl took a long, shuddering breath. Palms fallen open at his sides in ecstasy, his fingertips grazed the stone. Chin lifted to the night, all he could feel was expansion. Through closed lids, he could see the world, feel it for the first time, everything beyond himself. All the pain, all the pleasure. The beauty of the moon above pierced his heart so much that tears pricked beneath his closed eyelids. The wind that rustled the pines blew through his very pores, breathing, calling him to dance. The sweetness of Eleshen far below was a spear in his heart.

  Blue eyes surfaced, far away. Calling. Oh, how she called him. Rivers of light poured from Elohl, flooded from his very soul, reaching for her. Calling back to her as if he stood from the tallest peak of the most austere range, flooded by all the colors of the rising dawn and by the illumination of his own beating heart. And just as he felt he nearly had her, nearly touched that deep stillness of cerulean, his light was suddenly lanced by fire, snapped back to the column beneath him and the stern barbarian of a King standing tall in his mind.

  Focus! We have little time. I have been waiting for you, Rennkavi, searching for you, all throughout my long life. You didn’t come when we thought you would, when our hopes were so high and the time was so ripe. But you are here now, so now is where we must begin. Listen. The other has failed his Naming. He sunders all the Tribes when he should be uniting them. He had all the signs, the right bloodlines. I thought he was the one, when he came to me, but now I know I have made a grievous mistake. This must be repaired, and I can do little from here. You must correct my mistake, Rennkavi. Quickly. I have been waiting here, holding the Lineage for you like I did in life. Rennkavi is the Unifier of the Tribes. You must take it now… the other has failed and we have no time! You must take the Lineage…you must take your duty and the Goldenmarks!

  Elohl eyes blinked open. He shivered in the light wind atop the column. The man’s presence pressed in upon his heart, until Elohl’s blood thundered in his ears, compelled by a force beyond his understanding. Those wild eyes scorched him, urgent. Demanding that he take what was offered, like a feral lion snarling its prey into submission. The man’s touch pressed, deeper, reaching for something. And as it did, something began to rise. Elohl began to shudder, seizing with a monstrous bliss. This was raw power, wild and tremendous, not coming from the man’s touch but rising up from within Elohl’s own soul. Rising to the touch that commanded it to awaken. A leviathan of light, it surfaced with the power of a hundred burning suns, flooding Elohl with agony and ecstasy.

  The man pressed his hand deeper, his russet eyes searing. Accept it. You must accept it. Allow it to take you. For all our sakes…

  Elohl took the long, slow breath of his training. Obliteration beckoned. Tipping into it already, he could see nothing but light, plunging him, filling him, expanding to every horizon. And suddenly, Elohl felt how beautiful it would be. To give himself to it. Let it take him, completely. Take all his pain, take all his despair, take everything that had chilled his heart for ten ravaging years. Gazing into that light, he felt himself begin to slide, wanting it.

  Wanting such peace. Wanting obliteration.

  And with that thought, he let go. The leviathan rushed up, engulfing him. And plunged into an ocean of molten light, the illumination took Elohl, completely.

  CHAPTER 15 – OLEA

  Olea entered the wide barn doors, to find herself in a cheerfully-lit workshop. The mountainous man she had trailed from the fountain stood at ease beside a long workbench. An acrid tang of metals and smelting reached her, a fire crackling merrily in a hearth big enough for forging and equipped with bellows. But rather than the larger tools one noted in a smithy, this workshop had careful racks of well-polished small instruments, and progressive magnifying apparatus upon every workbench. A display of fine silver and goldworks stood to one side of the doors, the collected bracelets and earcuffs and filigreed amulets pieces to show an artman's craft. And the delicate filigree Olea spied within was very fine, its construction careful with thought.

  Which was all at odds with the enormous man who now faced her, waiting stock-still a few paces inside the door, but not so close that Olea felt threatened. He watched her as she surveyed the room, noting every corner, every niche, then settled upon his massive physique. Olea gazed upon a long rent of scarring down his face, saw how it trailed down the side of his neck and over his collarbone. Leading to a patch of vicious scars upon his broad chest, just visible where his homespun shirt laced. His gaze traced her also, landing upon her Inkings.

  “You are careful,” he said at last, in a rumbling basso like boulders colliding.

  “I was trained to be careful.”

  “Show me.”

  “You first.” Olea narrowed her eyes upon him.

  He sighed like trees falling down a ravine. And then began to strip off his brown leather jerkin. Pulling his white lambswool shirt off over his head, he relaxed his shoulders, careful to not rip the fine weave. His shirt he folded neatly and laid upon the bench as Olea perused his brutishly alluring bulk. The first thing she noticed was that he had no Inking, no trace of Kingsmount and Stars. The second thing she noticed was that the man was built like a bull. Rippling muscle moved in his arms, chest, and stomach, and it would have been intimidating but for the strange gentleness Olea felt in his nature.

  But t
he scarring in the center of his chest was what truly caught her attention. Ruinous, they were where an Inking should have been, old scars whitened with time and puckered. If he had taken a sword through the heart so terrible as the scars suggested, it would have killed him. But no wound of battle had made those, nor the strange trailing scars that tore their way from the left side of his square-jawed face and down over his collarbone to his brawny chest.

  “I burned it off.” The Kingsman rumbled at last, watching Olea. “It took seven applications of searing iron to get the whole Inking.”

  “Why?” Olea whispered, horrified and awed.

  “It hurt too much, knowing I had failed our kin.”

  Olea’s throat tightened, tears pricked. His statement, so simple, had touched her in a place so deep it had no name. And then her fingers were shucking her baldric from her shoulder, unbuckling her leather Guardsman jerkin, unlacing her shirt. And then it was all off, her trappings of palace life cast to the floor like so much rubbish. She stood, her woe and pride bared before the Kingsman, her kin, the only one she had ever met since the horror of the Summons. Olea breathed the metallic air of the workshop with her breasts and torso cold to the night air.

  His eyes softened, taking her in, seeing what was written upon her heart in black Ink. At last, he gave a rumbling sigh. “You’re too young. You would have been a child when that was done.”

  “I was twenty. I had my Seventh Seal.”

  “And so you gave yourself your Eighth. Without the community’s approval.”

  “I had my community’s approval.” Olea growled, dipping briefly to retrieve her shirt and pull it back on. “Five of us, all Seventh Seals, one of us who knew the Way of Ink marked us. We had the khemri venom. We had our Eighth Seal dreams. We survived them. And we did it because the rest of our community was about to die, Summoned by a traitorous King.”

  They faced each other a moment, Olea bristling, angry. She had trained herself to be thick-skinned, but feeling a Kingsman's disapproval was something else. But the stern, gentle mountain crumbled before her. Slowly, the big man came to one knee, the palm of his right hand settling to the mass of scars in the center of his chest. His other hand dropped to his side, where a sword should have been. He bowed his head, and in the light of the workshop lamps, Olea saw tears.

  “Eighth Seal,” the Kingsman murmured in his rumbling basso. “Your community welcomes you. The Alrashemni Kingsmen welcome you. Awaken to your new life, Chirus Alrashemni, and to your purpose.”

  Olea stood tall, her anger whisked away in a wash of ferocious pride. If he could have shattered any further, the Kingsman did, tears cascading down his square-jawed face. Olea strode forward, kneeling before the massive man, gripping his face in both hands.

  “You welcome me… without knowing anything about me?”

  “You are one of us. One of the last of us. How could I not welcome you?” The silversmith’s dark grey eyes were red with pain. Olea pulled his face close, driven by some unknown instinct. It startled him, and she felt him almost pull away. But then the Kingsman gave a great shuddering sigh. Their lips met, just a touch. A long moment passed, a touching of hearts, and then the moment broke and they both pulled back.

  It wasn’t love, and it wasn’t lust. But it was like coming home.

  Olea wound her arms up around his neck. And with great tenderness, the mountain of a Kingsman with a broken heart and burned-off Inkings brushed a hand over her hair, soft and slow. His thick muscles were solid beneath Olea's hands. His half-bound black curls, so much like her own, shone in the lamplight above his scarred face. Olea hadn’t expected him to soothe her pain, long years of loneliness and woe, simply by holding her as they knelt upon the workshop floor. But when he finally helped her to her feet as he came to his own, he looked down at her with fierce pride, brightening her empty life. And for his part, he couldn’t cease stroking her curls with one massive hand, and Olea didn’t stop him. Her sword-calloused fingers reached up, tracing the man's scars.

  “Kingsman,” Olea murmured. “I don’t even know your name.”

  He chuckled, relief flickering over his scarred visage. “Vargen. Vargen den’Khalderian. Silversmith.”

  “My name is Olea den’Alrahel.”

  “Alrahel?” His dark eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You must be Rakhan Urloel’s daughter, from Alrashesh.”

  Olea pulled back a little, surprised that he would know of her. “I don’t remember any Vargen in Alrashesh. I would have remembered you.”

  “I’m not from Alrashesh. I’m from the Third Court, from Dhemman.” The Kingsman was thoughtful, his face the chiseled wisdom of ancient gods. But his mouth was sweet, his demeanor kind despite the twisting line of his scar across his visage.

  “I’ve never been to Dhemman.”

  His massive paw touched her curls, reverently. “It’s in the mountains. We were Summoned, same as you. All the Courts met upon the Kingsroad. We marched upon Lintesh as one. When I survived and fled back to Dhemman, it had been emptied. Our children were gone. I traveled all that winter, to the First Court of Alrashesh, and then to the Second Court of Valdhera. They were the same. Abandoned. Looted. Empty but for crows and wolves and pikefish in the streams.”

  “We were captured,” Olea murmured. “Split up. The younger ones sent to foster homes and the older ones pressed into military service.”

  The Kingsman's breath caught in his throat. “There are more? Safe? Alive?”

  “A few, as far as I know. Did you… have a child?”

  Vargen sighed, his stout fingers still touching her curls. “I did. A son. His name was Khergen. He was eleven when his mother and I had to leave him for the Summons. I’ve looked everywhere for him. Every year, I pick up my shop and move to a new city. But not so many of our children have the telltale Alrashemni look as you and I. Khergen was blonde like his mother, with green eyes. And now I don’t know what he might look like. I may never find him.”

  “I’m sure he would remember his father. He will find you.”

  The Kingsman Vargen brushed back her riotous tumble of blue-black curls. “It is kind of you to say, but I don’t hold much hope. Not after so long. But I pledge myself to you, as best I can, Kingswoman. Know that my hands are yours. My sword is yours, as I should have protected all our kin the first time.”

  “Do you even have a sword still?”

  “I do. My own sword is in a trunk in the back. Along with everything else.”

  Olea's fingertips trailed over his scars, still visible above the edge of his shirt lacings. “So you burned your dedication away, but kept the trappings?”

  “Men do things they don't understand... when they grieve.”

  “And the rest of your family?” Olea hated to ask.

  The Kingsman's deep breath told her everything she needed to know. That single breath of their training. That single moment, to feel everything of one's emotions in a riot before stilling them beneath the calm for which Kingsmen were famed.

  A single breath, in which to feel all the heartbreak of the world.

  “My wife died. Elsiria died the night we came to Roushenn Palace. Along with all the rest of the Kingsmen.”

  And suddenly, Olea knew what story he would tell. A story of heartache and pain, misery and death. In Vargen's sorrowful grey gaze, she read that none of the Kingsmen had survived. That each and every one of them that had traveled to the palace for the Summons had met a horrible end. In his single breath, he had stilled a mountain of emotions for which there were no words.

  A woe that was beyond weeping.

  “Tell me,” Olea whispered at last. “Tell me everything.”

  * * *

  “It’s hard to say exactly what I saw,” Vargen murmured, cradling his tiny tea mug in his massive bear paws. They sat across from each other, fully dressed and sitting upon the high stools of his long wooden workbench, sipping a mellow tea. Mostly wintermint and elderbloom, it would calm and enliven the mind while they talked through what Ole
a expected to be the long hours of the night.

  “Why is that?”

  Vargen cradled his cup carefully in his big hands, as if its warmth could soothe him. “Because everything… moved. The walls, the furniture, the mirrors reflected walls that were impossible, even the chandeliers. The chandeliers!” He shook his head. “I've tried to recall it in detail, but specific memory still eludes me... the awful disorientation of that poison... those walls...”

  Olea reached out, settling her hand over his. “Steady. Start at the beginning.”

  He took a shuddering breath, and began again. “We arrived at the palace in full strength. Over two thousand Alrashemni came to the Summons, even elders who could no longer walk were carted through the city and carried up the steps of Roushenn. The King’s Summons had been explicit. All those past their Eighth Seal were to journey forth, or else there would be war against us. We were labeled traitors to the crown if we did not come, accused of High Treason, but without any specifics as to why the charge was being leveled. For what, I never did find out. But that was not my duty. I wasn’t Rakhan. My wife Elsiria and I marched at the front of the column. We were expecting conflict, but though King Uhlas den'Ildrian had amassed a presence of Palace Guard throughout the city, it seemed they were merely escort.”

  “As if he was not expecting trouble.”

  Vargen nodded, then sipped his tea. “And truly, I don’t think he did. Some were soothed, marching through quiet streets. Some, like myself and Elsiria, found ourselves suspicious. Why threaten us with High Treason, punishable by death? If the King had summoned us simply to renew our vows en masse, that’s all he needed to say. We would have come peaceably, without weapons.”