“Then we have to leave,” Eleshen spoke decisively. “All of us – the Kingsmen, the Jenners. We have to escape through Molli’s Abbeystone. Have her put us through somewhere safe, far from Lintesh.”
“I can’t leave Lintesh.” Temlin thrust a fist down to the ironwood table, his face set. “I am King-Protectorate. I am the representation of everything that resists Lhaurent’s atrocity in Alrou-Mendera.”
“But if you stay, you’ll play right into whatever trap Lhaurent has set for us!”
Temlin’s emerald eyes were fierce, but calm suffused them suddenly. A small smile lifted his lips and he reached out, cupping Eleshen’s face tenderly.
“I am an old man, Eleshen my dear,” he chuckled. “I may look young again, but I have lived more winters full of ale and hate than any man has a right to. Living the wreck of a life that I have has taught me about defiance – the strongest defiance is the one which faces the great maw of the Void.”
“But Lhaurent could kill you,” Eleshen whispered.
“Death doesn’t scare me,” Temlin murmured. “But the death of all our Kingsmen – that terrifies me. With Lhaurent’s threat against the Abbey and his move against Vicoute Arlen den’Selthir, the Kingsmen have got no strongholds left. If we fall, the Alrashemni will be wiped out. I never listened to my father much. He was a cold spar of iron and dry as sour cider; but one thing he never failed to tell Uhlas and I was that the Alrashemni Kingsmen are the backbone of this land. That I could always depend on them. If they fall – who will our nation turn to? Who will defend us as a tyrant like Lhaurent rises?”
“If the Alrashemni Kingsmen die,” Eleshen spoke, “so too does the heart of Alrou-Mendera.”
“Indeed.” Temlin brushed a wisp of hair from Eleshen’s face. Something sad suffused his eyes, and Eleshen’s eyes filled with fierce tears in return. She stared up at him, defiance rushing through her as she understood everything he was trying to tell her. “You want me to leave the Abbey. Take the remaining Kingsmen and flee, leaving you here to play Lhaurent’s game.”
“I want you to shepherd the Alrashemni Kingsmen,” Temlin murmured kindly. “To wrest from Lhaurent that which he wants from under his very nose, while I make a show of defiance and negotiation. I know you can do this. Whatever happened to you,” he stroked her sleek hair back from her face, marveling at it, “changed you in ways I cannot begin to describe. From a hot-tempered innkeeper has sprung a sword of cold wrath, full of unknown elements. Perhaps something you had all along. But in you, I feel a fighter with unsurpassable tenacity. You are utterly dedicated to the Kingsmen, to preserving our legacy. And that is who I need to lead this mission. The Abbey’s Kingsmen are too old. We need someone young, someone with fire in her heart and unshakeable belief in our legacy. And that, my dear, is you.”
“And this missive?” Eleshen took a deep breath, steadying herself to be chosen for such an important endeavor.
Lifting the large tome of sigil-scrawled brown leather from the desk, Temlin placed it reverently in Eleshen’s hands. Gazing at it, he touched the cover softly, his gaze pained even as much as it was sweet.
“This is Molli’s last journal.” Temlin murmured, his gaze lifting to Eleshen’s. “It is my most precious possession, besides the garb she made for me while I was in her company. I would like you to take it out of the Abbey. Shepherd all our treasures and people out of the Abbey, all but a few elders who will keep up a mockery of resistance here. Escort them through the Abbeystone to a valley in the mountains called Gerrov-Tel, protected from Kreth-Hakir notice by a powerful Alranstone Molli knows. Once that’s done, make contact with the Shemout Rakhan, Vicoute Arlen den’Selthir of Vennet, if he lives. Sebasos knows where his contingency location is. Regroup the Kingsmen into a unified force. Keep us, Eleshen. Keep us alive, and keep Lhaurent in the dark.”
“You would truly sacrifice yourself to Lhaurent?” Tears prickled Eleshen’s eyes as she cradled the leather tome to her chest, ready to guard it to the end.
“I will do what I must to protect our people,” Temlin spoke, hard fire in his emerald eyes. “That is what a King-Protectorate does. Please. Help me save our Kingsmen from annihilation. For Queen Elyasin.”
Eleshen bowed her head. With a heavy sigh, Temlin pressed his forehead to hers. They breathed together for a long moment, and Eleshen could almost feel Temlin’s heart as their breaths intertwined in the fading sunlight. So strong. So determined to raise his roar to the world, that his reign as a den’Ildrian King would not be forgotten, even if it was short. Eleshen hitched a breath and straightened her shoulders, still clutching the leather tome tight. Blinking away tears, she gazed up at her King-Protectorate, a man she had come to respect sooner than anyone she had ever known.
A friend she had come to know too late.
“I’ll do it, but not for Elyasin. For you,” Eleshen spoke. “And for our Kingsmen. Tell me where we begin.”
CHAPTER 8 – JHERRICK
Jherrick den’Tharn sat by the raised bier in the vaulted atrium of opalescent stone and falling leaves. It was always autumn here, in the Sanctuary of the Great Void. Stone archways surrounded him carven into ornate filigree, vaulted into a dome with an oculus that never saw rain. The light was soft, never the harsh light of true day, filtering in through the oculus and the milk-river walls around him. This place did have day and night, but the day was curled with mist and the nights endless with stars. Deep midnights devoured each evening, colored in auroras and constellations Jherrick had never seen.
Wherever he was, this wasn’t his world.
Like a dream, his life before the Sanctuary of the Great Void had become muted, distant. The horrid events of the past few months in Lintesh and Ghellen flowed from his thoughts, untenable here in the quietude. The walls of the agate-stone dome emitted a soft-hued light, twisting vines and tree roots climbing the sides, until the space seemed like a wild forest devouring all civilization. Boughs trained into candelabra surrounded the space, white oil lamps flickering like tiny flowers in a sighing breeze through the filigreed walls. Otherworldly, the lamps licked with flames that twisted through every color, but in those flames waited specters that darkened the edges of Jherrick’s vision. He knew that despite the solace he’d found in the gentle care of the Noldarum, he’d have to face his demons eventually.
Music rippled through the space, like harps or voices, far away. A solid rhythm like drums came as Jherrick’s gaze fell again to Second-Lieutenant Aldris den’Farahan’s body. The man looked so alive laid out upon the agate-stone bier. Jherrick reached out, touching Aldris’ hand: it was cold, just like every other day Jherrick had come to this beautiful tomb. Ripples expanded from a falling leaf as it wisped to the surface of the rectangular pool around the stone bier. Jherrick watched the ripples pass, silver and golden light glimmering the surface until the pool was once again silent.
Aldris was dead. His Essence Scattered, whatever the fuck that meant, from traveling through the blood-Plinth at the cave near Oasis Khehem. The Noldarum had dressed Aldris in state, before Jherrick had woken from his ordeals. A dark emerald doublet of soft velvet clad Aldris’ tall frame, embroidered with silver thread fine enough for any king. Black trousers of rough silk fit close to his long legs. His hands were clasped over a sword with a hilt of black crystal and a blade of milk-pale glass inset with silver runes. His golden beard and hair had been carefully trimmed and oiled, until they shone in the soft light of never-day. Color suffused the Guardsman’s cheeks, as if he might rise at any moment – as if life yet breathed within him, his heart still beating blood through his veins.
But he was cold – cold and gone.
Jherrick steepled his hands under his chin, elbows upon his knees where he sat upon the stone viewing-bench by the bier. Within the rippling waters of the pool, the bier and bench left Jherrick alone with the dead Guardsman, an enemy he’d come to call friend. Once more, Jherrick was alone. The story of his short life was only loss. Losing his Khehemni parents during the ra
ids on Quelsis. Trusting in the Lothren to harbor him only to lose his integrity. Watching life after life be snuffed out by Lhaurent den’Karthus behind the walls of Roushenn.
Walking the night forest alone to throw bodies into the wolf-hollow.
Jherrick scrubbed fingers through his short blonde hair, then laced them together again. Another leaf went falling into the still pool from a gnarled vine-maple writhing its way up a column by the oculus. The leaf floated in the pool, crimson with tones of autumn; crimson, like blood. Olea’s face rose in Jherrick’s mind, as blood poured from the deep slash that had severed her throat. Her death, lit by the brilliance of Khehem’s Alranstone in a pool of her own crimson gore, surrounded by the slain Kingsmen, stacked like cordwood to rot beneath the desert sands. Plus the only man Jherrick had ever called friend, now laying dead in this nowhere realm.
“Aldris,” Jherrick choked, tears stinging his eyes. “Why did you leave me?”
“He cannot hear you.”
Jherrick startled. Surging to his feet, he resisted the urge to snatch the sword from the dead man and level it at the intruder, but it was only the calm presence of Noldrones Flavian, standing with hands clasped in his pale starlight robe by the colonnaded entrance to the Memorarium.
The Herald of the Noldarum’s monastic order, Noldrones Flavian had been a presence during Jherrick’s recovery under the kind care of Noldra Ethirae. Standing quietly near the pool, hands loosely clasped behind his back, Flavian was cowled in his usual flowing robe of pale silk. Strength emanated from him; sharp eyes full of intelligence and dark with starlight watched Jherrick. Slender but muscled beneath his robe, his ageless presence held the whisper of eons, not a line marring his smooth skin. His long silver hair was braided over one shoulder, his profile masculine but graceful, lips full and nose aquiline. Jherrick shivered, then sank back to his seat upon the bench, his startled energy leaving him like a departing specter.
“I know Aldris can’t hear me.” Jherrick clasped his hands together once more, rubbing his knuckles.
“But it calms you to speak to the dead.” Noldrones Flavian moved in upon feet so silent Jherrick heard only the slip of his silken garb over the opalescent stone floor. Having a seat upon the bench, Flavian gazed upon the dead man with an unreadable expression. Flavian’s expressions were often unreadable, as if he had seen ages turn and neither life nor death surprised him anymore.
Jherrick knew he was ancient, but had no notion of the man’s age. Noldrones Flavian simply was, like a river or an ocean – silent and calm, endless and timeless. His long silver hair, braided ornately, framed a high-cheeked face that might have been austere had it not been so impeccably calm. Straight silver brows made no expression over eyes swallowed by black and endless with tiny flecks like stars in the cosmos. His lean body was still as time under his fitted silk robe, his long, pale hands resting in a folded position in his lap.
As Jherrick watched him, the man made an expression at last. The most ageless smile curled the edges of his mouth, and he lifted his strange eyes to the high dome at the center of the atrium. “It calms us all to speak with the dead. Just as it calms you. Because you know somewhere, out there... your friend still exists, and his essence still hears your words.”
A shiver lifted the hairs upon Jherrick’s neck. The Herald of the Noldarum was often cryptic, but at times the things he said resonated so strongly with Jherrick that he felt the man had seeped into his very being and learned all there was to know.
Learned that Jherrick was nothing but death – death and loss and a life of wrong choices.
“I feel like I need to do right by him,” Jherrick spoke, wringing his hands. “First Vargen, then Olea – then him. If I never left Roushenn, they might all still be alive. I was the one who cursed our mission. The Alranstone told me, when I came through from Lintesh to Oasis Ghellen: it said I would learn to shed tears when everything I loved was taken from me. It was right.”
“Heavy words and a heavy sorrow,” Flavian sighed, bringing his star-scape eyes back to Jherrick, holding his gaze with steady intensity. “But you can still do right by them.”
“How?” Jherrick’s brows knit in a frown.
“By doing what you came here to do. It has been twenty days since you came to us. You have slept, eaten, wandered our vast Sanctuary, mended your body and your strength. Yet, still you linger in the shadowlands. You have no curiosity for our hallowed libraries, full of more treasure in knowledge than your people have ever seen. You raise no eagerness towards the incredible feats of wyrria you witness others doing in our realm. You speak not with those here who have vast knowledge and would freely give it to you. You only sit, and stare into silent water and up to the endless stars – and into the face of death. You wait, like wraiths in the mists of evening. What are you waiting for, Jherrick den’Tharn? Why have you not sought to begin your journey?”
“My journey?” Jherrick gave a hard laugh. “You mean finding Olea – resurrection? I don’t even know what that means.”
“You have not even tried.” Flavian’s visage was unreadable.
“I have to go home,” Jherrick sighed. “I have to avenge Olea’s death. To do what I swore I would do.”
“Oaths without the alignment of your will are but empty words,” Flavian countered, “as is your vengeance without any fire to fuel it. For you know as well as I, that you have nothing – and no-one – left to return to.”
Brother Flavian’s statement hit Jherrick like a punch in the gut. His lips dropped open, but there was nothing he could say. Pain tore through his heart, a hollow loneliness that none of the wonders in this place could possibly fill.
“Aldris was all that—” Jherrick rasped.
“He was all that was left.” Brother Flavian reached out, touching Aldris’ body gently upon the shoulder. “All that remained of home. All that remained of your once-self. Of the man you thought you had to be, who once wore strong leather of cobalt but had lies in his heart.”
Lies in his heart. It was far too close to Jherrick’s reality, and he sat silent, not wanting it to be the truth.
“And when your comrade departed,” Flavian continued, “as so many others have before him, you were left with no tether, no course and no compass. You are a no-man. You have no family, no home, no loyalty. You have no lover, no heart’s purpose, no bliss in your life. You are a hollow shell of a wraith – searching. You watch the stars and water and death, hoping to find some comfort in emptiness, but find only emptiness, inside it all.”
Jherrick swallowed, blinking back a sting of tears. Staring at Aldris, he could say nothing, his fingers laced so hard his knuckles turned white. Something sang in his veins, something awful, twisting at Flavian’s honest words. “Am I that transparent?”
Flavian gave a soft sigh. His midnight-star eyes were full of an emotion Jherrick could not name. With a swish of fabric, he rose and came to stand behind Jherrick, his hands upon Jherrick’s shoulders. “Close your eyes, wanderer. Close your eyes and picture her, your deceased beloved. Describe her for me. Her essence.”
Jherrick shuddered. Closing his aching eyelids was a relief, and tears leaked from beneath them. His heart was so full and so hollow at the same time. Olea’s face rose in his mind. Not her dead face, but her living one. Laughing in the guardhouse, her white throat flashing. Snarling at an insult, her grey eyes fierce. Scowling at ledgers, her black brows pinched as she drummed her fingers on the stout desk. Smiling for him, all for him, when he dropped his spectacles for the umpteenth time and she swiped them up off the floor and handed them back.
Sometimes Jherrick had bumbled his fake spectacles on purpose, just so she would return them – with that incredible smile.
“Olea was like light,” Jherrick spoke at last. “The dawn that shines with truth. Honesty poured from her every movement. Generosity. Love. She loved life, even though it had done her so many wrongs. She loved the warrior’s way. Sometimes she was tempestuous, but she was never mean – never witho
ut righteousness. Her blood sang for justice in the world, and peace.”
“Feel these qualities surrounding you,” Flavian intoned in his solemn voice that surged through the vaulted space like a quiet sea. “Feel all those things gathering around you, coming into this space. Feel them touching your skin, breathing in through your nose. Feel them sliding across your tongue and diving down your throat – touching every fingertip and caressing every rib. Feel them moving into you, like a lover. Feel her now, still here, still with you.”
Jherrick gasped. He could feel Olea’s essence, her light and goodness, like mist diving in through his throat and seeping into his chest. Caressing like a zephyr with ethereal fingertips that made his flesh sing with bliss. He shuddered, astounded – regret and need combining with an ache so horrible his heart spasmed.
Jherrick sobbed. Noldrones Flavian’s arms wound around him as Jherrick doubled over with a primal scream, gripping the stone bench with both hands. Flavian was a solid presence at his back, holding, strong. Jherrick screamed again, releasing the ache, the misery. Of failing Olea, of not being able to avenge her death, of not belonging anywhere in his life, and not having anyone to come home to.
Of having no purpose – nothing but death and emptiness.
“Feel oblivion enter you,” Flavian murmured in Jherrick’s ear. “Feel the space that opens when we have nothing left. When we are nothing to the world we knew. Feel the space that opens inside of you when you are no longer the man you thought you were. When you are nothing, and have nothing. Feel the space that takes you, deep within. Feel it fill you. Expanding everything. You are it. It is you. You are the space and the nothing all at once. You are... the Void itself.”
Jherrick could feel it, everything Flavian described. Every torturous wrench of it, every hollow nothingness of it. Suddenly, everything within Jherrick expanded; like the primal nature of some ancient god filled him, his sobs halted, his breath paused. His sense of self was annihilated, and all he felt was the world breathing, through his every pore and sinew. A space as massive as the night sky opened up inside him, pushing his mind, body, and essence out to the ends of the world, and further – to nothingness.
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