Blackmark (The Kingsmen Chronicles #1): An Epic Fantasy Adventure Read online

  Luc stepped up next to her, close enough that their bare forearms touched, and gazed at her sidelong. “Any visions since I started treating you?”

  “No. Thank all that’s holy.” Ghrenna took a swig of her ale.

  “You don’t miss them? You don’t want them back?”

  “No.” Ghrenna turned to study the golden-blonde thief before her. “It’s a burden, Luc. It’s something I can’t control. I never know when the visions will strike, or how terrifying they’ll be.”

  “You never saw anything nice? Like winning a lot of coin at dice?” He leaned his tall frame over the barrier-stones, flagon cupped in his long fingers, gazing at her with a mixture of pity and concern. It was a good look, a look Ghrenna wanted in her life. A look she wanted to come home to. Something about it made Ghrenna feel empty inside, and she turned back to the view with a wry smile.

  “It doesn’t work that way, Luc. I see what it wants me to see.”

  He reached out, stroking her neck drunkenly but with a tender concern, playing with a lock of her white-blonde waves. “Have you seen my death?”

  Shock flooded Ghrenna. It took her a moment to realize he meant it to be teasing, his tone had been so utterly serious. She glanced over to see that a strange emotion had contorted his face into a hard frown. Gazing out over the rooftops, his attention was fixed upon the palace, and as Ghrenna watched, his jaw flexed in a hard anger. Ghrenna sidled closer, worried for him. Luc had been morose on and off since they had entered Lintesh two nights ago, and this was more of what haunted him.

  “Do you think you’re going to die?” Ghrenna murmured.

  He chuckled, ominous, his gaze never breaking from the palace, lit golden now in the slanting late-afternoon sun. “We all die, Ghren. The question is, when?”

  “Do you think you’re going to die soon? Because you’re here in Lintesh?”

  A shiver passed through Luc. “I may seem like a flippant fool sometimes, Ghrenna, and sometimes a callow lout, but whatever I am, I tell you this. A curse runs through my family, walking those halls.” He nodded towards the palace, his gaze still fixed upon it. “My mother died there. I had an aunt Mollia who died there before I was born, before she even made it to age seventeen. And now my brother and father. Every Lhorissian dies there, too young. If I go to serve the Dhenra… I’m going to meet a tragic end.” He looked around, an old woe haunting him. Reaching out, he stroked one finger down her cheek suddenly. “Those lake-blue eyes of yours… they make me wonder what you see. Fates of men?”

  Ghrenna shifted, pulling away. His words pricked her, as if stirring memories that went too deep, things better left dead and buried out in the snows. “You could die anytime, Luc. We all could. You could fall and break your neck tomorrow, trying to raid one of those mansions.”

  He chuckled again, and his hand returned to his flagon upon the stone wall. “Then my death would be a story, not a curse. I tell you, Ghrenna, death walks the halls of Roushenn. Untimely, secret death. People disappear there. My mother—” But he stopped abruptly, shutting his mouth and turning back to stare out over the rooftops, brooding.

  “Your mother?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Luc snapped sourly. “Focus, Ghrenna. We’re supposed to be scouting mansions. I’ve seen a number of potential access-points from this wall. Enough dawdling and drinking.”

  “As you say, Luc.” Ghrenna blinked in surprise, feeling like he had just slapped her in the face. But it was unsettling, the thoughts Luc had provoked today. As Ghrenna tried to blink away her ale-fugue, gazing out over the red roof tiles of Lintesh, she found her thoughts wandering. It wasn’t a vision, merely dire fancy, images of death, of battle, of starving out in deep snows, of being cut to ribbons by blades. Death after death after death plagued her, sourced from too many stories and too many of her own past visions. A late afternoon breeze caught the ramparts, stirring her white locks, cooling her sweat at last. Ghrenna looked up, gazing at the pinnacle of the glacier-capped Kingsmount, wishing the breeze could take her away from her own mind.

  * * *

  A northern wind off the Kingsmount snaked through the city tonight, cool and fresh. In her Kingsman greys, Ghrenna shivered, feeling almost chill for the first time since they’d arrived in Lintesh. Peeper-frogs chorused in the darkness as she waited for the signal from Gherris, who had climbed an ancient darkoak across the street. Crouched in the shadows of a hedge, Ghrenna was watching the wall for the passage of the Jenner patrol. Once the patrol passed, she would have twenty minutes to climb, set the grapple, get everyone up and hidden in one of the turret niches to wait for a second guard to pass before stringing lines across the avenue to the nearest rooftop.

  Their target tonight was a mid-sized mansion across from the Jenner compound. Luc and Ghrenna had timed the Jenner patrols. Shara and Gherris had earned a tour of a similar mansion available for purchase, a definitive example of the architecture in the area. They had gotten a very thorough walk-through of roof access points and cellars, having pretended to be fearful of burglars. Tonight’s mansion in the Abbey Quarter was a test for getting up on the Jenner wall, the house supposedly empty since the lord had moved his family into rooms at the palace for the Queen’s coronation.

  Ghrenna eyed the wall again from her position. “You sure you can get up there, Luc?”

  “With your rope? Absolutely.” Luc crouched in the darkness by her side in his thieves’ blacks, breathing softly in the night.

  Ghrenna eyeballed him. “Light a fire under your ass. You can’t be slow. That’s a fifty-foot climb.”

  “I’m not that bad a climber, Ghren.” Luc gave her a cheeky smile, but it was strained tonight. The call of a nighthawk sheared the darkness, coming from the oak across the avenue. Their signal. “Time to go.” Luc lifted the rope-and-grapple up over Ghrenna’s head, settling the grapple on her back. “No falling this time. You got your pipe?”

  Ghrenna patted her leather belt-pouch over her charcoal Kingsman greys. “Just in case.”

  “Up you go, sweetheart.” Luc slapped her on the ass, but not loud enough to make any suspicious sound. Ghrenna flicked his nose, then set her hands to the wall, found purchase for her feet and inhaled, and began her ascent.

  The top of the wall was silent, dark beneath a halo of stars in a new-moon night. Finally, she swung over the edge of the parapet, sweat-streaked and breathing hard. Ghrenna froze in her customary crouch, willing herself to be utterly still, to be unseen. Spreading her natural senses out into the night, she held immaculately still, using all her faculties to sense for any disturbance. But they’d timed it perfectly. No one was nearby atop her section of wall between the guard-towers. She set to with the grapple, securing it in a block of byrunstone. She was about to toss the rope over the side when the crunch of a footstep on grit caught her ears.

  Ghrenna froze, her face turned in the direction of the sound. A shadow was climbing the turret next to her, nearly as high as the parapet upon which Ghrenna hunkered. Someone else was working the rooftops of Lintesh tonight. Someone else had the same idea as their guild, to access mansions from the Abbey wall. Ghrenna stilled her body to silence, willing herself to be unseen. She felt her ability moving out, tendrils coursing around her, ready to turn any eyes that scanned the wall in her direction.

  Her heart was hammering, too fast. Fear slid through her belly. Ghrenna’s guild hadn’t yet made contact with the Lintesh Thieves’ Consortium, and if they were caught working tonight, they could be blacklisted or worse. Much worse. She held herself motionless, breathing as soft as she knew how. The man upon the wall was an agile climber, far better than she. He moved like the night breeze, lifting easily from hold to hold, letting his momentum do the work. Glancing up to the top of the tower, he seemed to change his mind, angling for the parapet upon which Ghrenna stood. Within moments, he was swinging lithely over the byrunstone railing, and had landed upon soundless feet in the darkness.

  Close now. He was so close. Barely ten paces
in front of her, and still, he had not yet noticed her standing in the darkness. Ghrenna spread her tendrils out, willing him to see nothing but the night. But as she gazed at him, heart thundering hard, then squinted harder at his garb, she found that something about it was familiar.

  And suddenly, she knew what it was. Because she was wearing the same thing. It was a Kingsman, in his greys, who had climbed this wall tonight. She could see the tooling of the Kingsmount and Stars upon his belt and sword-harness in the starlight. She could see the cut of the quadrant-split panels of his long jerkin and his deep hood. The leather was soft, cracked like it had been used hard over the years, though the man stood before her with effortless strength, lean and honed like a blade.

  A nighthawk cry sounded down below, a signal asking what the holdup was. Ghrenna couldn’t answer it. But the call startled the man upon the wall. He crouched, froze a few moments. Then leaned out, scouring the darkness below, looking intently at the darkoak across the avenue from where Gherris’ call had come. Ghrenna caught a glimpse of a well-boned, handsome face framed by the blackness of his deep hood as he scrutinized the wall, the gardens, the street, lingering in the places where Luc and Shara were hidden.

  He turned his attention back to the parapet before him, looking directly at her now. Ghrenna suppressed her trembles, holding perfectly still. Spreading her will out, she pushed it at him, pressed it towards his mind, made it absorb into him like pressing putty into a stone block. Breathing softly, she honed it, shaped it, slid it into his body, into his mind.

  His dark eyes swept her.

  And then swept her by.

  Ghrenna let a silent breath pass, easing her focus. But then his gaze flicked back. His eyes narrowed. He stepped forward a pace, and then another, slipping towards her like a heron, all lithe patience and sinuous muscle. He stood only four paces from her when his gaze suddenly sharpened. He blinked, then straightened, stepping forward again, closing the distance. And as he did, his face became clear in the thin starlight of the new-moon night. Ghrenna breathed out, her heart thundering hard. Her stillness shattered. Her focus broke as the night seemed to expand all around them and contract at the same time, swaddling them in stillness, in a dream.

  Because he was a vision. He was her vision.

  “Fuck Aeon…” He murmured to the night, barely a breath, his roiling-storm eyes fixed upon her, shock upon his face. But what slammed into his gaze next was need. Terrible, anguished, astonished, a horrible need ripped through those grey-opal eyes, so dark in the night. Hot and wild, implacable and uncontrolled, the flood of his desire found her, sluiced her, ripped her downstream with the force of a snowmelt avalanche.

  “Elohl.” Ghrenna could hardly whisper his name. Her tongue was dry in her mouth, her heart beating fast like hummingbirds. Her stomach rose, emptiness keening out to him. A hole yawned in her very center, a hole that had only grown more engulfing for ten long years, watching him, needing him, seeing him but unable to touch. His grey eyes shone like pearl in the darkness, and the force of their hold drew him forward, and her as well. He was inches away now, so close he could have caught her in his arms.

  But he didn’t. He stared down at her, transfixed, his pull stretching, lifting Ghrenna's heart up through her throat.

  “You’re here.” Elohl's breath was a whisper. Ghrenna could smell his warm musk on the night air, basalm-fir and lemonbalm. Those storm-grey eyes were set in a man’s face, rough and weathered. His scruff of short beard hinted at nights buried in snow struggling for warmth. Lean as always, his hand reached up, hesitating as if not believing she was real. And it didn’t feel real to Ghrenna yet either, as if it was merely a vision-mirage, ready to evaporate at the merest caress.

  Her breath ceased, wanting. Hoping. Not wanting. Afraid.

  His gaze softened suddenly. And there it was, all the things they’d never had time to say. All the love they’d missed sharing, all the days of pleasure and nights of bliss, sharing their lives wrapped in each other’s embrace. There it was, all the living that had stalled, that had died, that had been ripped away by a Summons that had come too soon, and a quest that had come too late. And now they faced the truth of those years, of that time, of that pain, gazing at it in each other’s eyes in the silvered depths of the night.

  Soft as gossamer, he touched her face, corded sinew and rough fingers of hard living tracing gently along her jaw. Bliss sighed out from Ghrenna. Ecstasy. She heard his breath in the night, his soft parting of lips as he had done when they kissed in the hollow of balewick trees near Alrashesh. She felt the embrace of his love, even stronger than before. As if his very essence had reached out with that one touch, embracing her, arresting her, swallowing her whole into its diamond serenity.

  For a moment, everything filled with light. For a moment, Ghrenna saw a white spire in the darkness, felt it twine them together, lancing up from their bodies and spearing the sky. For a moment, everything disappeared but this light, this warmth, this bliss.

  But the gentleness of his touch was obliterated suddenly as Ghrenna's head gave a vicious surge. Lights ricocheted across her vision, blurring, fast, too many. Suddenly, it was a riot of light chasing darkness chasing light, spinning with every color in the void. Spinning and shearing, twisting and tearing. Ghrenna shrieked. Clutching her head as the pain blossomed into a nightmare, she felt the spasm come like a falling star.

  Seizing ripped through Ghrenna’s body. Her jaw locked, she tasted blood, and her world went black. It was only moments later that she came to, now trussed by her hands around the neck of a man who was all muscle, slung upon his back. Still seizing, torn with pain, Ghrenna keened out. But his movement never faltered, sure and swift as he scurried them both down to the ground, then ran them silently across the dark avenue. She could feel his alarm, in every taught sinew, in every corded muscle. Elohl was terrified for her. She could smell it in the way his musk had changed, acrid, bitter.

  Ghrenna was terrified. Some part of her recognized that her seizures should have ceased by now. Some part of her felt seared, pierced by something that had lanced into her body and caused mayhem. Something unusual, but deep, old. Something that had dark and horrible memories of its own. Something that had only begun when Elohl had touched her. Another fit took her, violent. Her whipping motions almost toppled them, but Elohl was sure-footed, and his time in the mountains had made him strong like braided mast-line.

  “Hold on, Ghrenna… just hold on…” Elohl gave the call of a nighthawk beneath the darkoak tree by the tall hedge, sharp and urgent. Three dark-hooded figures emerged from behind it, armed to the teeth and ready to strike. Gherris did strike, the fucking madman. A knife went whizzing past Elohl’s ear as he ducked, the blade barely missing Ghrenna’s cheek as another fit of rigors took her, clenching her teeth, completely paralyzed this time.

  “Don’t throw knives at me, you fuckstone!” Elohl’s growl was deeper than Ghrenna remembered it, the command in it plain. It was the voice of a Rakhan, a seasoned commander, just like his father.

  “Who the hell are you?” Gherris’ low-snarled challenge was rabid, all thought of silence in the night forgotten.

  “Put her down, shadow.” Luc’s voice was smoother but strained.

  “Ghrenna’s having convulsions! Do any of you have threllis?” Elohl was lifting her from his shoulders to set her in the grass beneath the towering oak, untying her bound hands hastily, feeling her forehead, her pulses. But though Ghrenna yearned for his touch, where his hands went her seizing was triggered like poison. She keened weakly in the darkness, the only sound she could make through a locked throat as another spasm ripped every muscle.

  “Get away from her! You’re hurting her!” Luc shoved Elohl aside in the darkness. Ghrenna felt the cool balm of his hands, his sweet nectar flowing through her skull. Her keening dwindled to whimpers, her entire body still locked tight in pain. Finally, she was able to catch her breath, and when it came, it came fast. Her heart thundered in her chest. Her breaths were smal
l sips, rapid, uneven. “Easy, sweetheart, easy…” Luc murmured, the sensation of cool water pouring from his hands intensifying, surging into her head and down into her locked body.

  “Do you have someplace we can take her, quickly?” Elohl’s low baritone was all concern.

  “How do you know her name?” Shara interjected. “How do you know she needs threllis?”

  “We grew up together.”

  “Fuck Aeon!” Shara breathed. “You’re Elohl… from her dreams! From her visions!”

  Ghrenna opened her eyes just enough to see Elohl blink at Shara in surprise, but then she was suddenly hoisted into Luc’s strong arms. “Come on, sweetheart. We gotta get you to the inn. You! Elohl, shadow, whatever your name is. You’d better follow and explain all this, or so help me Karthor, I’m going to let Gherris disembowel you! He hasn’t murdered anyone since we got to Lintesh, and I’m sure he’s hungry for a first.”

  Sliding down into a pool of darkness, Ghrenna didn’t hear the rest.

  CHAPTER 25 – ELOHL

  They hadn’t dared bring Ghrenna in the front of the guesthouse with everyone dressed in thieves' garb. So Elohl carried her up the side of the inn and through the window of the thieves’ rooms, as no one else could climb it with the burden. But Ghrenna keened in pain the entire time, shivering and shuddering atop Elohl’s back. It was pandemonium for a moment, Elohl rushing her to the bed as she thrashed again, her screaming whenever he touched her face, trying to soothe.

  Elohl stepped back in tortured frustration as the lanky man in thieves’ blacks ripped off his gloves and threw them at the bureau with a murderous glance at Elohl. Sliding to the bed in haste, he laid his long-fingered hands carefully to Ghrenna’s temples, just as he had done before in the deep shadows of the hedge. She was hardly breathing, deathly pale, still thrashing violently. Elohl’s heart twisted as he watched, helpless. Something inside him gasped for life, too raw, too open, in agony every time she thrashed, every time she keened. Here she was at last, and he couldn’t touch her, couldn’t soothe her as he’d once done so well. Couldn’t even lift fingers to her beautiful white skin. Couldn’t cup her face into his hands and stare into those mesmerizing eyes that haunted him.