By Jean Lowe Carlson
The Kingsmen Chronicles, Book Three
Copyright 2018 Jean Lowe Carlson
First Ebook Edition
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
COPYRIGHT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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OTHER WORKS BY JEAN LOWE CARLSON | The Kingsmen Chronicles
Short Fiction
PROLOGUE – THEROUN
CHAPTER 1 – ELOHL
CHAPTER 2 – ELYASIN
CHAPTER 3 – ELOHL
CHAPTER 4 – KHOUREN
CHAPTER 5 – THEROUN
CHAPTER 6 – DHERRAN
CHAPTER 7 – ELESHEN
CHAPTER 8 – JHERRICK
CHAPTER 9 – ELYASIN
CHAPTER 10 – DHERRAN
CHAPTER 11 – ELOHL
CHAPTER 12 – THEROUN
CHAPTER 13 – KHOUREN
CHAPTER 14 – ELESHEN
CHAPTER 15 – JHERRICK
CHAPTER 16 – DHERRAN
CHAPTER 17 – KHOUREN
CHAPTER 18 – ELESHEN
CHAPTER 19 – ELYASIN
CHAPTER 20 – JHERRICK
CHAPTER 21 – THEROUN
CHAPTER 22 – DHERRAN
CHAPTER 23 – ELOHL
CHAPTER 24 – DHERRAN
CHAPTER 25 – JHERRICK
CHAPTER 26 – THEROUN
CHAPTER 27 – ELESHEN
CHAPTER 28 – ELOHL
CHAPTER 29 – ELYASIN
CHAPTER 30 – THEROUN
CHAPTER 31 – ELESHEN
CHAPTER 32 – KHOUREN
CHAPTER 33 – ELESHEN
CHAPTER 34 – KHOUREN
CHAPTER 35 – DHERRAN
CHAPTER 36 – ELESHEN
CHAPTER 37 – ELOHL
CHAPTER 38 – THEROUN
CHAPTER 39 – JHERRICK
CHAPTER 40 – THEROUN
CHAPTER 41 – ELYASIN
CHAPTER 42 – ELOHL
CHAPTER 43 – KHOUREN
CHAPTER 44 – DHERRAN
CHAPTER 45 – ELYASIN
CHAPTER 46 – ELOHL
CHAPTER 47 – JHERRICK
CHAPTER 48 – ELOHL
CHAPTER 49 – KHOUREN
CHAPTER 50 – ELESHEN
CHAPTER 51 – THEROUN
CHAPTER 52 – ELYASIN
CHAPTER 53 – ELOHL
EPILOGUE – JHERRICK
The adventure continues in DRAGON OF THE DESERT, | book one of The Khehemni Chronicles
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ABOUT JEAN LOWE CARLSON
APPENDIX 1 – PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
APPENDIX 2 – CHARACTERS
APPENDIX 3 – PLACES AND THINGS
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2018 Jean Lowe Carlson. All Rights Reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
First Ebook Edition, 2018
ISBN 978-1-943199-25-9
Edited By: Jean Lowe Carlson and Matt Carlson.
Proofread By: Matt Carlson and Stephany Brandt.
Cover Design: Copyright 2018 by Yocla Designs. All Rights Reserved.
Maps: Copyright 2018 Jean Lowe Carlson, edited Matt Carlson. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Graphics: “Typo Backgrounds” by Manfred Klein: http://www.dafont.com/ Free Commercial Use.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To everyone who made this labor of passion come true, you are awesome! Special thanks to Stephany Brandt for her fantastic and dedicated proofreading. Love to my parents Wendy and Dave for their ongoing encouragement. Thanks to my friends Marc and Claire, Josh and Lela, Sam and Ben, and Amber for their constant support. Thanks to the amazing marketing guru Ryan Zee for his mentoring and a special shout-out to J.R. Frontera and all the ladies of the Epic Fantasy Romantic Authors group – you are all the best!
Special thanks to my amazing Launch Team – Sankalp, Mary Birchenall, Linda Ilin Wilson, Gene, Mari, Umer, Norman C Stone, Tom, Dawn, Kelly, Pat, Louise Flowers, Deb, Rebecca Hamilton, Helena Legakis, Richard, Matthew, Fern, Karina, Steve, Brittania, Jessica Salafia, Barbara, Deny, Lorraine Wells, Cindy, Kenneth, Emilia, Evelyn, Penelope, Stella, Geoff, Nadia, Brenda, Vaishnavi, Tiffany, Edwin, Frank, Doug, Susan, Amy Manny, Cheryl Johansson, Amy, Tina, Tyson, Marshall, Abbie, Kimmy, Turbo, Dawn, Vanessa, Eylene, Barbara, Alan, Brian Chris, Ronda, Jessica, Sandra, Ronald, MarIanne, Robert, Theresa, Phillip, Sunny, Marta, Sarah, Sasha, Roxann, Kat, Wayne, Eileen, Debbie, Gayreth, Carleigh, Seraphia, Gavin, Julie-Anne, Martin, Celianne, Valerie, Susan, Joy, Tom, Dennis, Wendy, Barb, Alice, Simon, Rachel Jean Smith, Joe Roach, Kim, Andrew, Mary, Alina, Linda, Fiona, Amber, Nikhil, Juan, Vue, James, Valjandra, Queen Nuba, Georganne, Tony, Ari, Jim, Judith, Sarah Hughes, Derek, Jules, Matthew, Marcos, Brad, Kimberly, Corinne, Ross, Jan, Teresa, Phil Smith, Bill, Roger, Suki, Sean, Mohammad, Debbie, McKenzie, Tanya, Stephen, Sue, Paula, Paulo, Stephanie, Jackie, Gina, Shannon, Lynn, Lana Turner, Cath, Malcolm, Bertha Alicia, Thomas, and Jen – you guys rock!!
And as always, the most incredible thanks to my husband Matt Carlson. You are a wonder in everything that you do, and I love you through the cosmos and back!
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Click here ==> https://www.jeanlowecarlson.com/
OTHER WORKS BY JEAN LOWE CARLSON
The Kingsmen Chronicles
Blackmark
Bloodmark
Goldenmark
Prequel: Crimson Spring
Short Fiction
The Man in White
The Grasses of Hazma-Din
Darkling’s Cove
PROLOGUE – THEROUN
All around, General Theroun den’Vekir watched men fall.
The battle for Lhen Fhekran was not combat; it was annihilation. Annihilation of a country, of a city, of everything and anything that made a person human. Theroun could only watch from atop his mean black ronin cat as the sun set over the Kingsmountains – roaring out commands to shore up this barrier, to put more men on that avenue, to follow him to the next breach or the next. But despite Theroun’s desperate strategy, the army of Alrou-Mendera walked right into Lhen Fhekran.
And tore the Elsthemi Highlanders apart.
With a wave of their hands, Kreth-Hakir mind-benders at the head of the Menderian army marched into the capitol, causing Elsthemi to take their own lives in droves. Blood washed the cobbled avenues as Highlanders slit their own throats. Lime-whitened red braids scattered crimson blood as Elsthemi fell. Battle-cats yowled for their falling riders, going rogue with no one to command them, racing into the chaos. Ferocious Highlanders turned against each other to the unspoken commands of the Kreth-Hakir, gutting their comrades with horror in their eyes – that their body was no longer theirs to command.
Theroun wheeled his black ronin cat, watching the city fall. Burning engulfed the rear of the invasion. Flames took the night as the sun died over the western mountains. Homes caught fast, straw and thatch flaring high in the gloaming. Stout ironpine and yitherwood went up like matchsticks, popping
from resins. A sea of brown and cobalt-clad Menderians advanced with Kreth-Hakir in their herringbone-black leather armor – toward Theroun’s failing knot of Elsthemi with their bloodstained furs and snarling cats.
“To me!” Theroun roared, coughing into his sleeve, his throat bedeviled from the black smoke that towered into the crimson sky. A wretched light consumed the underbelly of the evening, a ferocious knot of keshari fighters surrounding Theroun, death in their pale blue eyes. General Merra Alramir in her ruined white battle-armor flanked Theroun, her elite keshari riders holding their fall-back position at the palisade of Fhekran Palace.
The Menderian column advanced before billowing towers of red smoke. Like an army of ants they advanced upon the gates of Fhekran Palace, not a man faltering. Their eyes were dulled, reflecting the bitter sky, too uniform to be men in charge of their own minds. They were a hive tonight, not a trace of fear or bloodlust or any human emotion in their faces. Ten thousand Menderian soldiers, mind-ruined just like the Elsthemi who succumbed to their own blades.
Controlled by the black arts of the Kreth-Hakir Scorpions.
A familiar face walked at the head of the column, a dark twist of dominance upon his smooth lips. A lack of emotion poured through High Priest Khorel Jornath, leader of the Kreth-Hakir Brethren, as he stalked Theroun down in the roaring night. Hulking of stature, the man stepped over the fallen as casually as a lion in a field. Rather than riding his glittering black scorpion into the red night, he came afoot at the head of Lhaurent den’Karthus’ cursed army. His scorpion was dead from its encounter with Theroun just a day ago at the Elsthemi-Menderian border, but the man who’d ridden it was very much alive. He had a bloody bandage around his upper chest, stained nearly as black as his silver-studded armor in the burning dark.
But where his Kreth-Hakir comrades assessed the three hundred vengeful Elsthemi and their battle-cats amassed before the palisades, this man held a cold stare only for Theroun. Khorel Jornath halted his comrades with one upraised hand, then spoke out in his rumbling baritone. “General Theroun den’Vekir of Alrou-Mendera! General Merra Alramir of Elsthemen! I have terms for you!”
“Terms!” General Merra sat tall astride her blood-washed white battle-cat to Theroun’s right, her two remaining Captains, the brothers Rhone and Rhennon Uhlki, mangled from battle and riding snarling cats just behind her. Merra turned her head and spat. Blood and soot ruined her white armor, her wild red-blonde braids and high cheekbones feral. A proud woman of battle, Highland defiance sat in every vicious gesture as she gave a laugh from atop her mount.
“Fuck ye an’ yer terms! Fight and face yer death!”
A dominant sneer twisted Khorel Jornath’s lips. Towering over his taller-than-average comrades, his dark grey gaze regarded General Merra with disdain. His haughty features and cutting cheekbones were cast in fire and shadows, the silver studs on his armor glittering in the late evening as much as the flat black weave devoured the night.
“You will die as I tell you to die, whelp.”
He raised two fingers. Merra’s hands suddenly spasmed to her belt-knife, pulling it from its sheath. She cried out as her hand flashed to her throat. Jornath held her, her blade pressed so close to her sooty skin it drew a line of blood. He stared into her eyes, his dark gaze empty. Showing her that her life was utterly his, and Theroun knew enough of the bastard to understand he wanted to see fear in the eyes of Elsthemen’s finest commander.
Submission.
“I’ll hear your terms!”
Theroun barked it as casually as he could, interrupting the demonstration. Jornath’s gaze flicked to him. Every gaze in the Kreth-Hakir battalion flicked to him. Every gaze in the Menderian army. Theroun felt the weight of that mass mind, like the crush of an ocean a hundred fathoms into the black. His breath came hard under that great weight. It hammered his chest and spiked pain through his body, but Theroun did not break his gaze from the Kreth-Hakir High Priest.
A subtle urge washed into him like a smooth rip tide. To raise his blade. To rip it across his own throat. So nice. So smooth. So good, to die by the blade as a commander should.
Holding onto his will, focusing it into a black spear so vicious Theroun could almost see it, Theroun forced his hand to pause at the hilt of his blade – not raising it. Shivering from the crush of minds, Theroun’s body blazed with a pain so bright he saw stars. Chin down and eyes focused, he held onto that black lance in his mind, barbed like a scorpion’s tail. Forming the essence of his defiance against the Kreth-Hakir – even though it was just imagination. He had nothing but his will against these men. But if that could keep Merra hale, keep even the tiniest fraction of the Elsthemi forces intact, he would use it.
He would do what he had to, to keep Queen Elyasin and King Therel’s people alive.
“I’ll have your submission, General.” Jornath’s cold gaze pummeled Theroun. “The rest can go their way if you agree to my terms. Personally.”
Fear slid through Theroun’s gut, tight and cold. He’d never really felt fear when faced with an enemy before. Even long ago, staring into the jaws of madness upon the Aphellian Way. But this was an enemy he couldn’t fight. Not bound as they were into a mass consciousness; all of it focused upon Theroun’s demise. Certainty shone in the High Priest’s gaze. This was not about warfare, but about lessons. Jornath was here to see to Theroun’s education – that the Kreth-Hakir Brethren were impossible to oppose.
Days ago, Theroun had gotten his blade into Jornath when they’d faced off in single combat. He’d left Jornath bleeding out in the grasslands. But to think a man dead and to know he was dead, were two very separate things. A fatal mistake that might mean death for the Elsthemi people, not to mention what was left of Theroun’s defected Menderian forces.
Somehow, Jornath had survived the Black Viper’s strike. And though one Scorpion alone upon the grasslands had not been able to take down the Viper, there were now nine. Nine herringbone bastards to reflect Jornath’s commands through an entire army, bolstering the aggressors while breaking the defenders.
Until Lhen Fhekran was nothing but black ash and cold blood upon broken stone.
Theroun saw that reality in the High Priest’s level gaze. Theroun hadn’t been many things in his bitter life, but he was a good General. And a good General always knew when the day was lost.
“I will give you my submission, personally,” Theroun barked, beginning the negotiations, his hand yet upon his blade. “And you will release the remainder of the Elsthemi forces. Immediately, and without damage of any kind.”
General Merra’s gaze flicked to him from atop her battle-cat, but she kept silent. The keshar-cats behind Theroun were still as ghosts in the roaring red evening.
“We’ve taken five hundred Elsthemi captives,” Khorel Jornath’s baritone was flat, his gaze level. “Five hundred of your best warriors, the ones that impressed us with their mind-resistance. They are to be tribute to my Order. We would take the last three hundred here,” his thick lips turned up in a smirk, “but my people enjoy a challenge. If you can fight me in single combat, Theroun den’Vekir, and best me a second time mind-to-mind... I will allow these three hundred and their cat-rider General to go free. Immediately and without molestation.”
“And the defenders behind the palace gates?” Theroun pressed, digging into the negotiation.
The Kreth-Hakir smirked, his dark eyes amused. “Yes. We feel your five hundred fighters inside the palisades, trembling as they watch our slaughter.” His gaze roved the fortress-wall. Some of that oceanic press lifted from Theroun. A thoughtful smirk lifted one corner of Jornath’s lips, and his gaze returned to Theroun, along with all its weight.
“You drive a clever bargain, General Theroun. How much do I want the glory of capturing eight hundred of Elsthemen’s best fighters versus how much I want the satisfaction of breaking you? But I am a reasonable man. The fighters behind the palace walls may go with your Elsthemi battle-General and her retinue. I give my word.” He nodded to
General Merra. “However, Lhaurent den’Alrahel was specific as to my appointment upon this campaign. To uphold my end of our alignment, I must remit the King of Elsthemen and the Queen of Alrou-Mendera into his custody. Alive, preferably.”
“Naturally,” Theroun growled.
His mind raced. He was out of options. Khorel Jornath would storm the palisades of Fhekran Palace with or without Theroun’s bargain. It was just a matter of how many lives would be lost. Theroun set his jaw, hoping he’d stalled long enough to give King Therel Alramir and Queen Elyasin den’Ildrian Alramir enough time to escape through the tunnels beneath the palace, into the mountains.
To enact their plan for the survival of their nations in this time of madness.
Theroun took a deep breath, feeling the crushing weight of the minds Jornath wielded. Setting his jaw, Theroun swung a leg back over the rump of his keshar-cat, dismounting with grace and keeping his exhausted body from twitching. Theroun’s Black Bastard cat yowled in a forlorn rage, lashing its tail. Stepping up to its blocky skull, Theroun let the mean beast butt heads with him. It opened its mouth, putting Theroun’s entire head in its jaws – though it didn’t bite, only marking him with an inundation of saliva. Pulling back, the black keshar raked the stones with dark claws, swinging its jaundiced yellow eyes to Khorel Jornath.
Strangely, the Kreth-Hakir leader nodded to the great beast. The cat gave a nasty growl, raking the paving-stones to chips with its claws. “Your beast claims you, Theroun,” the herringbone-clad man chuckled, “but you must surrender to me if you wish your warriors to live.”
At his words, the eight Kreth-Hakir raised their hands. A shearing sound rasped the air, swords and axes and knives drawn from leather scabbards. The keshari defenders behind Theroun cried out. Theroun saw from the corner of his eye that all those weapons had been put to throats. But Theroun heard no gurgles, no screams. The man before him was playing a game of dominance and submission, not of life and death.
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