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

  But the innkeeper said not another word. She bustled about her business with a quick smile, pouring a tot of ale for Elohl and leaving a flagon of well-water before hustling off to the backrooms. Elohl lifted the ale to his lips, swigging it back to drown a myriad of emotions that tried to surface. But where once drinking had drowned the memories, its effects over time was to simply make him brood, as it was doing now.

  The innkeeper Eleshen returned, just as Elohl swigged the last of his ale and his stew. Whisking to the table, she swept up the dishes with a quick smile, then shucked them into the washbasin with a deafening clatter. Washing with gusto, her movements were sloppy and imprecise. Elohl found he couldn’t remain seated any longer. It was habit from the highmountains, taking care of his own messes, and it felt strange to have someone do it for him after all this time. He stood and approached, taking a dish and submerging it, scrubbing with a woven rag alongside her.

  “Now, see here! You don’t have to… I mean… that’s not for you to…” Her gaze was upon the dishes, but Elohl saw her gaze flick to his upturned wrists as he scrubbed his dish. She made a small dismayed sound, seeing the twin ragged scars there, one at each wrist. Elohl quickly turned his hands over, still washing, mountain-tanned skin at the backs of his forearms showing now only rope-burns and fighting slashes he’d taken over the years.

  “Aeon!” The innkeeper’s cheeks went positively crimson. She shifted her stance in a hasty, uncoordinated way. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to… I mean they were just there…!”

  Seeing his self-inflicted scars had upset her. Elohl could feel it, like a wave pulsing from her body. The flustered innkeeper stepped backwards suddenly, still flushing, and stumbled over a wooden stool behind her, falling sideways and upsetting the washbasin. And though he'd had a bit to drink, Elohl’s reflexes were quick as a darting heron. With that uncanny instinct that had kept him alive far too long, he stabilized the washbasin with one hand and caught her around the waist with the other, pulling her close.

  The pretty innkeeper’s breath was high above her woven corset and white blouse. Her weight felt good to Elohl; her slender waist fit nicely in the crook of his arm. A need stirred, something denied most of his years in the High Brigade. Cerulean eyes surfaced in his vision, cool, clear. But suddenly, the truth was plain to Elohl. If Ghrenna was alive, she hadn’t come to him. Hadn’t seen his whereabouts in any vision, or didn’t care to search. He was alone in the wilderness and those twin lakes were just that; lakes to drown himself in. Lakes he had drowned himself in for years.

  Memories of a woman long gone.

  But this woman here, now, was sweet and kind, and she smelled of rosemary bread and lavender honey. Elohl’s nose was in her hair, his lips breathing in scent by her throat. She made a low, obliterated sound, sinking into his body, molding to him like a cloak in the rain. His breath was fast; hers was faster. But Elohl wasn’t a rogue, and he wouldn’t take advantage. He inhaled slow and deep, as he had been taught long ago. Setting the innkeeper Eleshen on her feet carefully, he stepped back.

  “Forgive me,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean to… you could have been hurt…”

  But the words had hardly left his mouth when she moved forward, lips rising to his. His careful calm shattered with the shock of that kiss. How sweet she tasted, how warm she was. Elohl’s arms were around the pretty innkeeper, drawing her close, his heart full of need just as her lips were. And then they were sinking to the kitchen floor, finding a sudden and unexpected sweetness to round out the mitlass and the bright spring sunshine.

  * * *

  Eleshen lay in the crook of Elohl’s arm in the sunlight filtering to the kitchen floor, her blonde braid woefully disheveled from their lovemaking. Her fingers splayed across Elohl’s bare chest, tracing his Inkings. Elohl pulled her closer, scenting soap and lavender upon her hair with a contented sigh. The sweetness of the afternoon had eased him, melting something of cold mountain nights like a soothing balm.

  He closed his eyes, relaxing back upon the pine boards. Something pulled at his mind. Deep blue drifted across his vision, backed by sunlight filtering through his eyelids, serenity infinite like a mountain lake. Elohl found himself gazing into those crystalline depths, the still water watching him back, as if eyes drifted up out of its fathomless blue. Scents of high tundra came to him; pine boughs and air so cold it tasted of wintermint across his tongue. A whiff of char drifted through his vision, acrid like pine resins aflame.

  Suddenly, the innkeeper Eleshen sat up. “Oh, no! My bread!”

  Launching to her feet, her half-bound corset spilling open, Eleshen practically flew to the byrunstone oven. Hauling the metal door open, she coughed at the scorch within. Elohl wrinkled his nose as smoke poured forth, coughed as Eleshen hauled four blackened rosemary loaves from the oven and unceremoniously tossed them into the kitchen fire.

  “Well, that’s that.” Eleshen huffed, watching them burn. She looked back, her pretty face full of humor. “I guess I had better things to do this afternoon than tend bread.”

  She came back and straddled him with devious intent. Elohl gave a satisfied sigh despite himself. Reaching up to stroke her messy braid where it fell over her breasts, he slid his other hand up her bare thigh, gripping the crease where thigh met hip.

  “Bread is the least of our concerns…” He murmured, enjoying her weight upon his hips.

  Eleshen leaned forward with a sweet but wistful smile, her fingers tracing his Inkings. “Are you really one of them? A Kingsman?”

  Elohl found himself smiling at her kind touch, even though smiling felt foreign to his lips. “It’s nice to not be called Blackmark, for once.”

  Eleshen snorted. “Blackmark. What a horrible slur for such a beautiful promise. A promise of everything you are... to your King.” Her fingers traced the mountain, the central star at its peak. Her touch stirred Elohl, deep below the marks, where he had tried to be cold and hard for years. Like little runnels of sunlight, she found his deepest ice, making things melt.

  “Not just to our King, but to our kin.” Elohl corrected gently. “Alrashemni. Before we promised our service to Alrou-Mendera's liege, we promised it first to ourselves. Before we were ever Kingsmen, we were Alrashemni, and still are.”

  “But your oath goes hundreds of years back.” Eleshen countered. “To be the right-hand spear of the King. To be his to call, for justice on any matter. Be it through might of arms or through intelligence of negotiation. Did you learn the Kingsmen arts of intelligence? Peacemaking?”

  “Some,” Elohl murmured, stroking her fingers, breathing into the soft curiosity between them. “I am Alrashemni, but I’m not a Kingsman. Not quite. I only reached my Seventh Seal by the time my people disappeared, a year shy of my full training. I don’t actually deserve to wear these marks.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re worn after your Eighth Seal,” Elohl’s smile was soft, “at age twenty-one. When you become fully Inked and take the Oath of Allegiance to the King of Alrou-Mendera. Only then can you be truly called a Kingsman, rather than simply born Alrashemni.”

  Elohl watched Eleshen trace his Inkings. “What do they truly mean, the marks?”

  “You seem learned on our matters. Do you not know?”

  She shrugged, tracing the rightmost star, near to an old blade-slash Elohl had gotten in his first year in the Brigade. “I know some things. Other things not so much.”

  “Our Inking is called the Chirus Alrashemni.” Elohl murmured, indulging her. “Translated it means, Dedicated of the Land, a title we receive along with the Inking when we pass our Eighth Seal. The mountain is a double-reference, both to the Kingsmount itself, representing the nation, and also to the enduring solidarity of our vow to the King and his house. The five stars are for the five tenets of Alrashemni life. Strength. Flexibility. Wisdom. Knowledge. Patience.”

  “The central star is larger than the others. Why?”

  “The central star is wisdom. In all things, we are t
o be guided by our deepest intuition, the inner sight of the heart, which knows before the mind.”

  “What do you mean, intuition?” Eleshen prodded.

  “Intuition drives who we are,” Elohl murmured. “Allows us to achieve wisdom in mediation. Being a Kingsman is not truly about killing. It is about negotiation, peacemaking. Violence is and has always been considered a last option.”

  “But you are trained killers. You learn killing arts nearly from birth.”

  “Yes. The sword that is honed the sharpest pierces best when a rabid boar attacks.”

  “Poetic.”

  “Practical.”

  “Had you killed anyone before you went to war? Did you kill the men who came to take you? How old were you when the Summons came? Twenty? You must be near thirty now...” Eleshen’s hand reached up to stroke Elohl’s short beard.

  Elohl sobered. These questions plagued him too deep, dipped too far, upsetting his newfound sunshine, his tenuous ease. These questions dove inside him like knives, piercing, slashing. Opening wounds best forgotten. Too many memories surfaced from each slash. Too many failures. Elohl pulled her hand gently from his face, holding it to his chest instead, what had once been lithe and young now lean and hardened by rough living and too many tortuous ascents.

  And scarred. Too many scars.

  “It doesn’t matter now.” Elohl tried to keep his voice calm, but it came out hard-edged, final.

  The pretty innkeeper’s lips pursed, fierce. “But your entire clan just disappeared after that Summons! That accusation of treason from your very own King…! And then they banished the Alrashemni children to the furthest campaigns like criminals!”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “But, they must have killed everyone, all your parents, all your teachers…!”

  “I said it doesn’t matter!” Elohl rose from the floor and unsat her with a growl, lacing his trousers. The glacier that protected his heart had shifted from the bliss of their sun-drenched afternoon, and it shouldn’t have. Roiling emotions were too close, too surfaced from the deeps, fished up by the innkeeper’s uncanny acceptance, her torpid prodding. Elohl strode from the kitchen, his heart gripping him hard. He pushed out the back door, ripping his cloak and other belongings down from the wash line.

  Eleshen was out the door in a flash after him, her shirt barely laced, her hands on his bare arms. “Please! Forgive me! I didn’t mean to upset you… Please, I just…”

  “You should learn to keep your mouth shut!” Elohl snarled in raw passion. It was a man he didn’t know, a beast of pain long submerged pulling at him, a leviathan seeking to drown him beneath that formerly-placid blue lake. Cerulean swallowed his vision, just for a moment, and Elohl felt suffocated. He took the long, slow breath of his training, then yanked his shirt on over his head. He should never have come here.

  He should never have tried to live again.

  “The Kingsmen are dead! The Alrashemni courts are empty. Leave it alone.”

  “I know, I mean, I just… Kingsmen saved my family!” Eleshen clutched her arms, at last keeping her hands to herself. “I wouldn’t be here but for them! In the raid, they were suddenly there in the night, protecting us…! My father was Dhepan of Quelsis. The King hadn’t sent aid, even though scouts knew Valenghian raiders had crossed the border. But somehow, the Kingsmen knew. They sent fifty, just fifty men and women. And fifty Kingsmen kept the city safe from hundreds of raiders.”

  Elohl turned slowly. Suddenly he could see it, her pain, just as fresh and raw as his. All from seeing a Kingsman walk through her door this day. “The Raid of Quelsis. Fifteen years ago. Valenghians snuck through the Borderlands and burned Quelsis in the middle of the night. My father was among the fifty protecting the city.”

  “Your father?” Eleshen stepped back, her gaze flicking over his lean, iron-wrought frame, his tall stature, his black hair that shone with highlights of blue in the sunlight, scruffy beard and grey eyes. “Urloel den’Alrahel … you look like Urloel!”

  Elohl’s throat burned. “My father was Rakhan of the Court of Alrashesh. He led the defense at Quelsis.”

  “He did. He talked at length with my father, readying the plan.”

  A long pause stretched. Something had knit between them, a cord of pain, a cord of promise. Something thickened the air, of destinies intertwined. Elohl’s hand twitched. If his sword had been in his fingers, he’d have cut that cord. But though there was pain for him here, dredging up his past for a curious little innkeeper, there was also peace. Hadn’t he found it already? An afternoon of warmth and good sweat, shadows of sunlight filtering through his closed eyelids?

  “Come back inside.” Eleshen pleaded, earnest. “I could… use some help with the pots.”

  Elohl glanced at the road, noting the angle of the sun. It was long past mid-afternoon. The spring sun was already on its way down the mountain, and the shadows grew long and chill. A part of him howled, not wanting to go back out into what was sure to be a cold, hard night. Cerulean plucked at his vision. With a sigh, Elohl scrubbed a hand over his short beard, nodded his assent to Eleshen, and pushed the vision away. She reached out, taking him gently by the fingers, tentative. And with a subtle tug, led him back inside to the warmth.

  CHAPTER 5 – DHERRAN

  Pain exploded across Dherran den'Lhust’s face as he slipped a punch and was anticipated. Blood from his lip spattered the yellow earth of the summer-ring. It was the only blow that had landed upon him this fight. Cheers rang from the crowd, fists pumped in exuberance for some violence in the match at last. Eyeing the big man before him from between raised hands, Dherran allowed no more punches to land. Flowing out of the way of the next five swings, he moved with unfettered ease in the scalding summer heat. His opponent's massive fists pummeled nothing but air, as Dherran moved by a hair’s breadth each time. Light on his feet, he avoided his opponent by a slight twist of the hips here, a minute shift of his feet there.

  In the center of the dirt ring surrounded by spears, time seemed to pause. An eternity of noise flooded Dherran’s ears, even as he focused on his breathing. Rhaventia’s main square was packed for its annual summer celebrations, and the prize fights were the top attraction for the week. Pennants flew in the breeze from every gable and doorway. Awnings had been refreshed with gay stripes, reds and hot yellows that reflected the high-noon sunshine. Coarse farmers and laborers crowded around the ring of tall spears, the week one of idleness for the lower classes. Pressing in, their eyes shone rabid for blood. Swigging bottles of ale, their attention was upon Dherran and his hulking red opponent, both shirtless for the spectacle as they fought for the final title today.

  But just as Dherran was taking the measure of the big man with the shockingly red hair opposite him in the ring of spears, he found his measure being equally taken. There was little to no weight behind each of the big man’s swings. The brute was biding his time in the sweat-drunk heat of the day. And so was Dherran.

  A trickle of perspiration beaded down to Dherran's eyelashes. He blinked it away.

  “Come on! Hit the Blackmark! Get him again!” Someone in the crowd screamed.

  “Rorouk!! Rorouk!!”

  “Knock the treasonous whoresson on his ass, Rorouk!”

  Shirtless in the spear-circled summer-ring, everyone could see Dherran’s black Inkings upon his broad chest. Everyone knew his training, Kingsman, a supposed traitor to the crown. And everyone hated him for it. It enraged his opponents, making them come at him furious and fast. Which was always a mistake.

  Dherran's solid bulk was loose in the high noon humidity, relaxed in his quick, small movements. His opponent already glistened with runnels of sweat, breathing hard with all his seeking punches. And still, Dherran slipped effortlessly from each punch, counting on exhausting his adversary. Dherran could hit the man and hit him hard, but it was far more satisfying to watch the lout's fury mount, watch the veins in his temples bulge, see his face become blister-red with effort and embarrassment.
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  A satisfied smirk lifted Dherran's lips. A soft snarl of pleasure as he did his best to ignore the vicious jeers of the crowd. This is what Dherran was good at. This is what he lived for. The pleasure of a fight, of working off his steam, of sweating it all out beneath the high summer sun in the clinging dust. This was where he belonged. A sense of rightness filled him as Big Red threw a stretch of punches that hit nothing but the breeze. Once upon a time, those sour jeers towards Kingsmen would have been enough to make Dherran livid like a raging boar in the ring, forgetting everything of his training. Once, they would have pushed him to cataclysmic destruction, to his own detriment. Once, such slurs would have been enough to give his opponent opportunity.

  But time had taught him lessons. That rage got you hit, and hit hard. And so Dherran tuned out the slurs, the curses, letting himself enjoy the fury of the moment, the pleasure of knowing he was superior to his massive opponent. That he was a better man than all these louts who leered and jeered, spit and drank. That he was better, and he would show them all this day, right here, right this very moment and in every summer-ring all season.

  Because he was a Kingsman.

  His snarling smile of well-earned patience increased.

  But suddenly, his opponent backed off a pace in frustration. Wrapped fists still up, his seething blue gaze fixed upon Dherran’s Inkings. “Come at me, you cocksucking Blackmark!” Big Red bellowed. “Come at me or I'll tie you to a post and fuck your mother in front of you!! Royal Kingswhore!”

  The man made a gesture that was hard to misinterpret.

  And just like that, Dherran's easy flow was gone. He felt his rage rise, until his ears rang with it. He felt it flash, seething and hot. Just as it had when he was young among his comrades on the training field, Elohl and Olea, Suchinne and Ghrenna. Back then, he would have been taken by that rage, and lithe Elohl would have gotten the best of him. But now, even in the grips of the red that washed his vision, he was able to find solace, a kind of peace in the middle of the burning. Rather than let it sweep over him like he once had, Dherran held his anger, cherished it, nourished it.