Blackmark (The Kingsmen Chronicles #1): An Epic Fantasy Adventure Sword and Highland Magic Read online

  Olea strode a straight route from the infirmary to where her rounds began at the West Guardhouse, down a few sets of grandiose staircases to a shortcut through the deepest labyrinthine halls that would avoid the palace bustle. Even at the height of the morning there were few folk about in the deepest halls of Roushenn, the labyrinthine corridors echoing and silent. Turning right, Olea entered the vaulted reaches of the West Armory, which had a passage that led up to the West Guardhouse on the far side.

  It wasn’t an armory, merely a hall of antiquities from the martial history of Alrou-Mendera. Iron racks holding suits of armor, glass cases full of weapons and medallions of bravery, massive tapestries of lord’s crests adorning the walls. And though it was intriguing, all evidence of Alrashemni Kingsmen antiquities had been removed from the hall, and their absence was notable. Olea walked the vaulted space slowly, her soft footsteps echoing in the silence. Gazing at the armor upon their iron displays, she saw countless niches barren, entire suits having been removed from the hall. Sword-displays hung empty for ten paces. Glass cases were pocked with dented blue velvet where medallions of bravery and honor had once lain but had been removed.

  Olea had never seen evidence of the Alrashemni honor here, even in her first year at the palace. All of it had been removed in the week after the Kingsmen's disappearance. Gazing around now, a feeling of barrenness arose in Olea. An aching feeling of loss deep in her chest. Here had been evidence of how her people had served their kings, and now only their absence remained like a hole in her heart, and a hole in the heart of Roushenn. Kingsmen had been all but erased from Alrou-Mendera's history, as if a hand of destiny had swept them from the continent.

  Olea’s chest clenched. She turned away. This was no place to linger, not today, not with everything else she was thinking about Elohl’s discharge. He’d not be honored any more for his service, if he was still alive, than she was for being a Kingsman at her loyal post. And that was all too plain here, staring at her from every empty display.

  She was about to leave the hall, when something like a sigh caught her attention, from far up in the hall and to the left. As she moved slowly toward the sound, she heard a hot curse issue from behind a suit of gold-plated armor. Close enough now to glance behind the iron-wrought stand, she saw a young woman in a long pale green silk gown sitting in the small niche. The woman looked up, startled and angry, but her milk-smooth features and fierce green eyes relaxed as she noted whom had found her.

  “Dhenra Elyasin.” Olea dropped to one knee, bowing her head, her hand to her sword, just halting the other hand in time and moving it back to her side rather than pressing it to her Inkings. It was a hard habit to break, bowing like a Kingsman, even after ten years.

  Elyasin den'Ildrian smiled ruefully, her tear-stained face splotchy and cheeks flushed, eyes all the more brilliantly green for the red that rimmed them. “Captain-General. As you were.”

  Olea lifted her head, but did not rise. “Are you all right, Dhenra?”

  “Oh, fine! Just fine.” The young woman laughed, harsh. She leaned her golden-blonde head back against the armor, her words biting. “Fourteen suitors who would be King, all of them trying to manipulate me with trade agreements. And whichever I choose provokes the chance of war with all the others! My father’s Chancellors, always in my ear! And Castellan Lhaurent, what a waste of my time! Why must I supervise the palace household when I have a kingdom to run and a war to manage!” Elyasin rested back upon the armor again. “Leave me. I wish to be alone.”

  “You are unguarded, Dhenra.”

  Dhenra Elyasin looked up, feisty and vicious, with the same rash temper her brother Alden had once possessed. “And who is going to accost me here? The Ghost of Roushenn? No one uses these halls… it’s why I come down here.” Scrubbing her fingers through her lush golden hair, she combed her bright waves over one shoulder angrily, then gave a vicious growl. “What am I going to do, Olea? A marriage? Aeon's tits! This is harder than managing the war in Valenghia…!”

  A tear leaked down the Dhenra’s face. She scrubbed it away. Olea knew that gesture. The Dhenra was in a temper and angry with herself. Elyasin had never enjoyed weakness. Olea was reminded of the high-spirited girl who used to stare upon the practice grounds, mouth open and gaping. Of when nine-year-old Elyasin, fascinated by Olea’s Inkings, had demanded to learn the sword and other arts of the Kingsmen. Olea had at last relented, and taught her Dhenra in secret.

  A secret the two still shared twice weekly.

  “Take your time. Consider your options.” Olea murmured gently, stirred by the rash fury of the young woman before her. “A Queen must be thoughtful when she has the luxury. Take the advice you require to gauge trade agreements. Walk among the people in Lintesh, ask what they need. Your coronation is still a month away at Highsummer. Even so, weddings and treaties can wait. Alrou-Mendera has had unwed queens before. Foster goodwill in the wake of your father’s passing, and your people will stand by you no matter how you choose to rule.”

  “You say my father taught me?” Elyasin's golden brows lifted, her tears drying. “I say you have. You give me the best advice, yet again. Unsought-for.”

  “Kingsmen always speak truth to our liege, Dhenra.”

  Elyasin had settled, and now was gazing at Olea, thoughtful. Shrewd. “Everyone wants something from me. All my suitors, the Castellan, the Chancellors. They all look at me as if I’m supposed to do what they say. They offer counsel expecting me to be their puppet because I'm young, and a woman. No one offers advice freely. So what do you want from me, Captain?”

  The question took Olea aback. Her face opened in honesty, even the suggestion that she might be manipulating her Dhenra abhorrent. “I want nothing from you, Dhenra! All I’ve ever wanted is to see you succeed. You have strength and a keen mind. And I would like to see a powerful, outspoken Queen ascend the throne.”

  The Dhenra smiled, wry. “Won’t that be the day? The dour suspicion of my father King Uhlas, followed by an outspoken Queen.”

  “Your father was a man of deep and unfathomable plans, Dhenra.”

  “And yet, for all his planning, I feel I am surrounded by wolves and not allies!” Elyasin snapped, rising in one lithe movement from behind the armor, her green silk gown pouring down her young body like water to puddle at her feet. One hand settled to the jeweled dagger that always rode her waist, her jade eyes flashing fire.

  “I don't even know who my true allies are, Olea! My father kept his own counsel and his secrets were known to none. And now I know nothing! And these past nine months, since his death, I’ve not known where to turn. Once the Kingsmen were allies to the Crown that could always be depended on, fighters, counselors! He spoke so highly of them when I was a child, calling them his truest vanguard! And then he reaped them down and no one knows why...!”

  Olea went very still. Her heart was racing, hearing her soon-to-be-Queen raging upon this line of inquiry. It was one thing for the common folk to speculate on what had happened to the Kingsmen, but for the Dhenra herself to know nothing, that was dangerous. Everything inside Olea rose up in shock, in fear, her hackles high, that Elyasin knew so little of such a definitive event in her own nation.

  Something must have shown upon Olea’s face, because Elyasin was watching her, her hard gaze every bit as shrewd as her deceased father King Uhlas. “Does anyone know why my father charged the Kingsmen with high treason? Do you?”

  Olea knew she had to answer her Dhenra. But horrors were surfacing, burned into her mind as that awful time was resurrected. The clench of her stomach as she looked into Elohl’s belt-purse. The caving feeling of dread in her belly as they ran back to the Alranstone. Her mind being sundered by that man riding the scorpion.

  When they’d returned to Alrashesh, fatigued and empty-handed, they’d found that the rest of the Alrashemni youths had already left for the safehouse, the fortified ruins of Kepsburg-on-the-Rhine, taking the livestock and provisions with them. Olea could still smell the dry pe
at of the yards, the empty silence of the stone battlements, the training quadrangles and the merchant circles. They’d run through the main training amphitheater to pack supplies, intending to trek back to Lintesh against their elder’s orders, when that Aeon-awful creak of a hundred bows drawn all at once had lanced Olea’s ears.

  Bowmen had ringed the upper ramparts of the practice yard's amphitheater. Hidden, and somehow also concealed from Olea’s hearing. Waiting for someone to make the vast mistake of coming back to Alrashesh. Someone who could tell them the location of the Kingskinder. Olea and Elohl and their companions had formed a bitter ring in the middle of the dusty training amphitheater, weapons drawn. And then, the same tall man in black foreign armor with a herringbone weave that had accosted them in the Alranstone clearing had stepped forward from the ring of archers and swordsmen.

  And when he did, Olea's world had been torn apart.

  “Olea?” The Dhenra's murmur broke into Olea's memories of that bitter morning.

  Olea took a long, single breath. “Forgive me, Dhenra. Today is the tenth anniversary of… when we were arrested and conscripted into service. It weighs on me.”

  Elyasin blinked, caught her breath. Sadness lifted her brows. “Forgive me, Captain… I didn’t realize… But all the more that this be discussed! For ten years, our realm has been in the dark about what happened. I have been. So, what do you know of the Kingsman Treason? What have you heard?”

  “What do you know about it?” Olea countered. “Let’s start there.”

  The Dhenra tapped her fingertips on her gown, then indulged Olea’s query. “I found an annal in the library that describes the Summons of the Kingsmen more thoroughly than I was taught, or heard from my father. He was ever tight-lipped about it, even when my brother Dhenir Alden confronted him. I was so young, and Alden and I were away at the Summer Palace on the Elsee when it happened. But no one I ask knows what actually occurred here in the palace. Not the Chancellors, not Castellan Lhaurent, not the Guardsmen. And in all our training sessions, you’ve never once mentioned it. So I ask now. Do you know what truly happened that day?”

  Bitter bile rose in Olea’s throat. Her fingers lifted to her chest, tracing her Inkings, thinking of that awful time. Nearly two thousand Kingsmen had been shown to rooms scattered throughout the bowels of the labyrinthine palace, and then… gone. Olea scowled, her straight black eyebrows furrowed. She had always assumed that when it was time for the Dhenra to become Queen, King Uhlas would have told his daughter what had really happened. But Uhlas had never told his son, Dhenir Alden, about the Kingsmen disappearance. Olea knew that much was true, as many days and nights as she had spent with Alden, and the conversations they’d had. But King Uhlas had never told Elyasin, either. And now he was dead and couldn't tell anybody.

  Olea traced her Inkings, pondering how much she should say to her Dhenra. How much was safe to tell a hot-tempered, untested future Queen with few allies.

  “I don’t know… exactly what happened.” Olea murmured. “I was at our Court in Alrashesh when the Summons came. My brother Elohl and I were only twenty. We weren’t Kingsmen yet, so we weren’t Summoned for the Oaths of Reinstatement. Kingskinder under twenty-one were left behind. We were collected… afterwards.”

  “The annals say that the Kingsmen are dead, but there was no public execution, no trial,” Elyasin murmured. “No one actually saw them die. They simply showed up here at Roushenn and were never seen again. Even the oldest maids and cooks remember nothing of the Kingsmen after their arrival. They were shown courtesy, taken to rooms, and then… nothing. In the morning, all the rooms were empty. The Kingsmen had vanished in the night, without leaving a single blade nor boot behind. Some writers say they abandoned their King, used magic to disappear into the mountains like wraiths.”

  Olea scowled. “If that was the case, they would have come for us Kingskinder who were caught. But none of our elders ever came for us, Dhenra. The few Kingskinder I’ve been able to trace went to foster-families to learn a trade. Those past their Fifth Seal were split up into military service. I've discovered a few names in the lists over the years.”

  Elyasin’s face twisted in disgust. “I read about that. The youths were pressed into service. Like slaves. Slaves in my own country, serving their lifeblood up to my father against Valenghia!”

  Olea held her gaze, hard and honest. “It is my honor to serve the Crown, Dhenra.”

  “Even after what my father did to your people?”

  “You are not your father.”

  “No, I am not. And I will find out what happened, and why. I dislike secrets in my realm.”

  “Everyone in Roushenn keeps secrets,” Olea murmured. It was a common adage about the palace, labyrinthine fortress that it was.

  But the phrase struck a violent chord with the Dhenra, who clenched one fist, a livid scowl upon her face. “Not from me, they don’t. Olea, if you know—”

  “Your highness!” A smooth voice suddenly cut the air in the hall, like an oiled whip. Startled by the sound, Olea’s head whipped up, glimpsing the intruder. King’s Castellan Lhaurent den’Karthus moved forward down the armor hall with imperious efficiency in his tall, slightly stooped frame. Piercing grey eyes under dark brows rode his high cheekbones, his well-cropped black beard and hair streaked with grey. Immaculately groomed, the Castellan’s grey silken doublet, silk robes and breeches were always fresh. Silver chains of office hung from his doublet’s high collar, polished and shining. Rings in silver and gold bedecked every finger. A ring of a dusk-grey metal adorned the index finger of his left hand, with a ruby in the center, decoration around it. Everything about the man was polished and perfumed and well-oiled, down to his scented breath and buffed nails.

  He gave Olea a cold look. “Captain den’Alrahel. Why did you not alert someone of the Dhenra’s whereabouts? She is needed in the Small Rotunda to meet Prince Ilkresh of Crasos, to discuss the grain embargo.”

  Olea lifted one eyebrow and set her jaw. Castellan Lhaurent den’Karthus’ smooth baritone always irritated her. Whenever he approached, his soft-booted silence made Olea think of rain barrel eels slipping through dark water. Lhaurent had never given anyone specific reason to think he was disloyal, but Olea didn't trust him. She’d never been able to accuse him of anything, but she had her suspicions. Thievery, perhaps. Embezzlement. Maybe plotting to murder someone to better his own station. Although he was absolutely indispensable as Castellan, running Roushenn with impeccable effortlessness.

  “Castellan Lhaurent,” Olea growled. “The Dhenra wishes to be alone. I am sure she can manage her schedule to her liking.”

  Lhaurent den’Karthus’ eyes narrowed upon Olea’s tousled blue-black mane, her undone buckles and laces, at the Inked star on her chest. Lhaurent had never been friendly, and he wasn’t about to pretend now. His tone dripped scorn. “You are a mess, Captain. It is a wonder anyone lets you remain in service.”

  Olea was about to retort, when the Dhenra suddenly stepped forward from behind her suit of armor. Elyasin’s back was straight, her posture unassailable as she approached, imperious.

  “Leave us, Lhaurent. I was in need of a report from my Captain-General before her rounds, and you are interrupting. You may tell Prince Ilkresh that I will be along presently. Invite him to music, wine, and delicacies in the Viewing Gallery. I will be no more than fifteen minutes.”

  The Castellan betrayed a small surprise, but he gave a languid bow. “As my Dhenra wishes, so shall it be done.”

  He turned on his heels and glided smoothly from the hall, as if his ego had never been bruised by his Dhenra’s sharp rebuke. The Dhenra watched her Castellan go, her posture still impeccable. But once he had turned the corner, Olea saw Elyasin fiddle with her knuckles. “Aeon, I never hear him coming! If I did, I’d be able to prepare myself better.”

  Olea’s lips twitched in a snarl. “He’s like an eel, Dhenra. All that oil in his hair greases his passage.”

  The Dhenra snorted. Her lips w
ere still quirked in laughter as she turned upon her captain. “Olea! For shame. He is a loyal subject, both for my father and his father before him. Lhaurent is a fixture of this palace for the past thirty years, and he knows his business. No one runs Roushenn with such grace as he.”

  Olea said nothing more, her teeth set with distaste. She never heard Lhaurent’s soft-booted feet approaching, either. And with her uncommonly acute hearing, it was one of the things about the man that made her immensely suspicious about him.

  “What are you thinking, Captain?”

  Olea mussed her blue-black curls a moment, then decided to shut her mouth on her wariness of the Castellan. “He’s just an eel. That’s all.”

  Dhenra Elyasin’s lips pursed. “I suppose not everyone who is loyal is agreeable.”

  But Olea was still watching where Lhaurent had gone. “Are you certain he’s loyal?”

  It was out before Olea could take it back. The Dhenra’s smile changed suddenly, into something thoughtful far beyond Elyasin’s twenty-one years. A look like her father Uhlas might have had, shrewd and calculating. “Are you certain he is not? Do you know something about him, Captain?”

  Olea’s eyes flicked to her regent. In Elyasin’s sharp gaze, Olea read the steady depth of Uhlas. Sometimes the Dhenra was as hotheaded as her elder brother Alden had been. But sometimes she was her father, flinty and calculating. And Olea could not lie to Uhlas’ daughter.

  As a Kingswoman, she could never lie to her regent.

  “My suspicions have no proof, Dhenra. Alden and I never had any proof of anything.”

  Elyasin stepped closer, intent. “Suspicions and proof of what?”

  “Treachery against the Crown.”

  “Castellan Lhaurent?!” Elyasin looked shocked.

  Olea shook her head. “Not necessarily. But someone who knows these halls.”

  Elyasin raised one regal gold eyebrow, cool as stone. “Explain.”

  Olea took a deep breath. It was time to tell what she knew. Elyasin had been denied the truth from so many sides, it was against Olea’s oaths as a Kingswoman to withhold any more. Even if it was dangerous, even if it placed her liege in a precarious situation, Elyasin had a right to know. She would be Queen in just four weeks’ time, and she was right. A Queen needed the truth from her allies. Olea’s chest clenched, feeling the pain of that time.

  The pain of love still fresh even two years after Dhenir Alden’s death.

  “Two years ago, just before he died,” Olea began, steadying her voice against a flood of awful memories, “your brother Alden and I were looking into the Kingsmen disappearance. It was one of the reasons we were spending so much time together openly. Looking into why your father was acting so paranoid, why he had become so secretive. We had just started to dig into some dire leads, when Castellan Lhaurent exposed our… intimate affair. For the good of the realm, he said, to bring our improper relationship before the Chancellate rather than speak with your father the King privately about it. It put your father in a terrible position, Dhenra, having such a shameful family matter of Alden and I’s indiscretion be made public. But what Lhaurent’s exposure of our affair truly did… was stop our investigation into the Kingsmen disappearance by separating Alden and me.”

  Elyasin’s eyes had gone wide. “Two years ago. That was when the Chancellate voted for you to be beheaded because of the scandal. I remember that day.”

  Olea nodded soberly. “Your father was merciful. He sent me to the cells instead. And put Alden on a trading ship to Ghrec with the merchant fleet.”

  “The ship that crashed…” Elyasin’s face fell, infinitely sad.

  Olea nodded, trying not to think about that horrible time. “That lighthouse should have been lit, Dhenra. That ship never should have crashed coming back into port.”

  Elyasin’s green gaze flicked to Olea, sharp. “You think someone orchestrated Alden’s death? Darkened the lighthouse on purpose to crash the flagship that night? Because of what you two were investigating?”

  Olea nodded. “Because we were investigating the Chancellate in regards to the Kingsmen Summons. And the palace household. And the Generals. There were whispers of rumor leading into all those arenas, Dhenra… rumors we had heard and were about to follow. But we were stopped before we could find anything conclusive. And then Dhenir Alden was killed on that ship. Only someone very powerful could have persuaded or bribed the lighthouse-master of Amlenport to darken his charge for a night when the ship of the King’s son was coming into the harbor.”

  Elyasin was very pale. And very silent. Her fingers rubbed her knuckles. “Walk with me, Captain-General. I have a request to make of you.”

  Olea nodded and offered her arm. The Dhenra took it regally, resting her fingers upon Olea’s sleeve just as she might do with any man. It was strange these days, to have a woman so high-ranking in the military. But there had been a time when it had not been, and Olea knew the rituals of respect that bound a Kingswoman to her liege. She escorted her Dhenra from the hall, starting down the labyrinthine corridors beyond the West Armory.

  “Captain, I want you to re-open your investigation into the Kingsmen disappearance.”

  Olea startled, but did not lose her step. “Yes, Dhenra.”

  “Use what resources you must. I will give you a writ for the treasury and to excuse you from your regular duties, but keep your activities very discreet. You are trained in espionage?”

  “Yes, Dhenra.”

  “No one else must know, unless you can recruit someone to aid you that you absolutely trust. I must know why the Summons of Kingsmen Treason was dispatched, what led to it, and what happened afterwards, in detail. If possible, before my coronation in four weeks at Highsummer.”

  “Yes, Dhenra. May I speak freely?”

  Elyasin glanced over. “Always.”

  “Why are you looking into this? If it got Dhenir Alden killed… why take it up now?”

  The Dhenra paused and Olea halted. Elyasin's golden brows furrowed. “Because I think the Summons of the Alrashemni was wrong. Everything I have read in the ancient histories speak of the Kingsmen with high honor, citing them as the Crown’s most trusted alliance, and most reliable weapon. But all the events of the past thirty years concerning the Kingsmen have been scrubbed clean. I am in the dark, captain, and I don’t like being in the dark. My father left me a vast kingdom, but he also left me vast worries, and an ongoing war with Valenghia. You have always been forthright with me, and my brother Alden loved and trusted you like none other. You have given me wise council without manipulating me, and you have kept every secret I have ever told you. If all the Kingsmen were like you, then I think my father's Summons was amiss. And perhaps precipitated by... something else. Something that still may trouble our nation. And that I will not abide under my rule.”

  Olea's throat tightened. She dropped to one knee in the hallway, her head bowed in silent respect. Elyasin was proving wise beyond her years, but Olea couldn’t help but wonder if the Dhenra subjected herself to the same unknown tides that had ripped the heart out of the Kingsmen, and of her beloved Dhenir, Alden.

  “You place yourself in danger if you pursue this, Dhenra. Like Alden did. Whomever is behind this… if they hear of it, they may try to strike you down before your coronation. Before you truly have the power to move against them, independent of the Chancellate.”

  “Yes. I know.” Elyasin murmured. “And if we find that my father actually was the source of the Summons, and did something with the Kingsmen, something so horrible he could never tell me, then that is that. I will hate him for his decision, but it was his to make as King, for whatever his reasons. But if not…”

  “The Summons didn't come from Uhlas.” Olea breathed, head still bowed, knowing she had to tell her Dhenra everything.

  Elyasin went utterly still. “What?”

  “Alden and I found one thing out for certain with our inquiries.” Olea's murmur was softer than specters in the looming hall. “That King Uhlas w
asn’t at the palace when the Summons went out, nor when the Kingsmen arrived at Roushenn. He was in Valenghia, making a last-hour effort to stop oncoming war with the Valenghian Vhinesse. The signature on the document was a very precise forgery. Your father never gave that Summons. Someone else did. Someone, or someones, very close to him. And you have inherited all your father’s Chancellors, Dhenra… and his staff… and all his generals…”

  “All those who were close to my father are now close to me.” Elyasin's words were very quiet as she realized the terrible truth. Olea didn’t need to nod. Her heart sank like a stone. Fingertips brushed her shoulder and Olea knew her cue to rise. She came to her feet, gazing at the fierce, porcelain-boned Dhenra. Elyasin reached out, trailing her fingers over Olea’s Inkings.

  “Find out what happened, Olea. I trust you, just as Alden trusted you. Find out what happened to the Kingsmen, and who was behind my father’s reign. And once we know…” Elyasin’s eyes went flinty. “I will clean out my own rule. And start fresh.”

  “Be careful, Dhenra. I admonished Alden to be careful—”

  “But my brother was not careful enough, was he?”

  “Alden was never one to take care.” Olea blinked back a prickling of tears. Her heart twisted. She could still feel the closeness of him even now. His soft breath at her ear in sleep, the way his lion-rich laugh used to ring through the practice yard when she bested him. The warmth of him, so smooth and hard, in bed.

  Elyasin reached up, stroking Olea's wild hair away from her cheeks. The Dhenra's face was sad, but the set of her jaw was uncompromising, just like her father's. “Do this for me, Olea. I know I put you at risk, but I have no one else I trust…”

  Olea breathed back her grief with a single, slow breath. She offered her arm. “I will not fail you, Dhenra.”

  CHAPTER 7 – JHERRICK