Goldenmark

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  Something roiled inside Theroun. As Khorel Jornath spoke, that black energy within the silver net rippled, trying to fight its way free. Even as Theroun pondered the Kreth-Hakir’s words, he felt a silver thread within his mind snap.

  And then another.

  “I can feel it, Theroun,” Jornath leaned forward, “fighting my weave. You have been given something only the highest echelons of Kreth-Hakir Brethren ever hope to receive; an Initiation which awakens the deepest nature. For our everyday selves are but shells for that which lies within. Even the talents of many who hold wyrria cannot match the full force of the sleeping leviathan that fights to get out of you now, awake and aware. It has a form, Theroun, and it has a need. It will tear you apart to get what it needs.”

  Theroun let out a slow breath. He could feel the truth of Jornath’s every word. The enormous force within him fought, sliced, stung. More silvered threads snapped to its raging. “I’m not Alrashemni. I don’t have wyrria.”

  “Delude yourself like that, dear General, and you will soon have no life.” Jornath’s smile was gone. “You may not be Alrashemni, but you have a wyrric talent stronger than any I’ve seen in a god’s age. You have a wyrria to match the Scions of the Wolf and Dragon. But yours—”

  Jornath ceased speaking suddenly. A tiny smile held the corners of his lips. He pushed his bulk to standing, and Theroun pushed back his chair and rose also – though for what, he didn’t rightly know. Jornath towered a head higher than Theroun. As he stepped closer, Theroun was forced to look up to meet the man’s gaze. Stepping into Theroun’s personal space, the man halted. Lifting a hand, he settled it to Theroun’s shoulder. His hand was solid, but with a lightness that spoke of dynamic strength.

  “I will not press you, Theroun, to take up our mantle,” Jornath’s words were almost kind. “But I can tell you that within my Order are the only people who can save you from the force that fights inside you. For thousands of years, we have honed ourselves to survive the venom of our own will. Until we control our wyrria, not the other way around, and from it, we harness power. A power greater than any mortal man. You have two choices – embrace the venom and learn our ways, to control it – or succumb.”

  Theroun shivered. He shrugged off Jornath’s hand, and the man let him go. “I will never become one of you. No matter what salvation you promise.”

  Jornath’s eyes faded to a sorrowful place. “That’s what I said, too, once, when my latent wyrria was awoken. By the touch of a man with fire in his veins, the hand of our God, Leith Alodwine. I was just seventeen at the time. Leith seized my wrist when I tried to slip a ruby ring from his finger during a distraction my urchin friends had concocted...” Jornath’s smile was wry. “Destiny comes when it comes. Embrace yours. Only the Brethren could save me then, and only the Brethren can save you now. Learn what we have to teach. Become so much more than a mere mortal.”

  Uncertainty roiled within Theroun. He knew he could never take such an offer, and yet. “You met your god in the flesh?”

  “Our god was only a man.” Jornath’s smile was mysterious. “We revere Leith Alodwine because of everything he brought into being, and everything he came to be.”

  With that, Jornath stepped backward, giving Theroun space. “I have duties to attend. Please, enjoy your meal. When you are finished, Brethren will escort you to new rooms, for a bath and a bed. You hold status as Initiate among us now. One who has awakened Scorpion-wyrria but has no formal training. One who shall be treated with respect until his decision is made to join us.”

  “No more shackles?” Theroun lifted an eyebrow.

  “You may escape if you like, General.” Jornath’s lips twisted into cleverness. “But know that wherever you go, I go. That silver weave in your body remains, until your wyrria shreds it to nothingness. And when that happens... I doubt you’ll be running much longer.”

  “How long do I have?” Theroun felt the pain just on the other side of Jornath’s silver web – how dark it could be.

  “Not as much time as you would like.” Jornath’s eyes lost their humor. “Not with a wyrria suddenly woken so strong within you, with no markings or bindings to contain it.”

  “What is it?” Theroun asked, needing to know. “Scorpion-wyrria?”

  “It is the essence of willpower.” Jornath’s gaze was frank. “That force of mind and matter that can turn the universe to your own intentions, to the power of your focus and intent in the world. It is the very manifestation of your will. In every way.”

  “What can a man do with it?”

  “Whatever he wills,” Jornath’s eyes were uncompromising in their intention and strength. “If he wills it hard enough, and with enough impeccable focus.”

  “And my will?” Theroun took a breath. “Why is it trying to tear me apart?”

  Jornath’s eyes became sad, penetrating. “Only your own will knows why it is trying to kill you. Why, in the deepest part of your essence, you do not wish to live. Why the sting of the scorpion and the strike of the viper’s poison are taking you down from the inside. I might have said your wyrria was Wolf and Dragon, so deep does conflict writhe within you, except that I know the flavor of the Scorpion’s poison. Have a meal while you can, Theroun. Build your strength. For your darkest battle is not far ahead, I’m afraid.”

  With that, Khorel Jornath turned on his heel and strode from the room to shadowed halls beyond. The doors shut with a low boom and Theroun was left alone in the white hall, pondering all that had been said. He could feel the enormous power of his wyrria, stretching, trying to find the weaknesses of its prison. He felt a few more silver threads break – snap, snap, snap.

  Without a word, Theroun sat back down at the table. He began to eat, his mind racing through strategy after strategy.

  Only to find that against this foe, he knew nothing.

  CHAPTER 13 – KHOUREN

  Khouren stood at the edge of the shanty-camp inside the deep pre-dawn shadows of the First Tier. Blending into the darkness, he’d lingered there most of the night. Facing the black portcullis of the Watercourse Gate, he stared at the dim line of the Elhambria grasslands, just beginning to brighten in the quiet autumn chill. Dawn suffused the eastern peaks of the Eleskis with an amber glow, wispy clouds moving through the rose sky.

  Guardsmen in cobalt moved about the quiet gate, extinguishing the night’s torches and hailing each other with sleepy grumbles and quiet jests. Five hundred paces distant, the waving grasslands beckoned. Rousing himself, Khouren shifted, ready to step forward. Away from the shantytown and through that yawning portal, into the vastness beyond. He’d lived out in the world before. It wasn’t so far to the gate.

  As Khouren tried to twitch a foot forward, however, weakness overcame him. A sliding feeling like he was falling into deep water. Drowning. Choking. Breathless, Khouren collapsed to his knees. Head hanging, he fought for air as his vision tunneled. Closing his eyes, he fought for calm.

  At last, the vertigo passed. Opening his eyes, he saw more light lifting the sky. True dawn had arrived, and as Khouren mused upon its hateful loveliness, he heard a quiet figure step to his side. Looking over, he was not surprised to see Ihbram gazing at him with a savvy frown. Khouren’s uncle hunkered, nodding his trim russet beard at Khouren.

  “Need the vial?”

  “No.”

  “How many hours have you been doing this?” Ihbram gazed at the gate.

  “Too many.” Despair filled Khouren as he stared despondently at the grasslands. “I have to go to Elsthemen, Ihbram. The true Rennkavi – I have to find him.”

  “You’re not getting far, ghendii,” Ihbram snorted. “It takes time to conquer battle-panic as bad as you’ve got. I’ve seen it before: it cripples men. Takes them years to recover, if ever.”

  “I don’t have years.” Khouren’s tone was dead, though deep inside, a tumbling wrath of emotions flooded him. He rose to his feet and seized his uncle by the jerkin, abrupt. “I have to get to Elohl. Don’t you understand? If I don�
�t, than I have to follow—”

  “Lhaurent.” Ihbram’s words were soft. “I know.”

  “I can’t do it, Ihbram!” Khouren gasped, giving in suddenly to the torture that flooded him. “Shaper!”

  Khouren hadn’t felt such twisting agony in decades. It wasn’t like him to have strong emotions, but this desperation was so terrible it made him shudder. The conflict of the Alodwine wyrric bloodline rose in him, and he felt it again – just as strong as it had been a hundred years ago, when he’d left the world behind to crawl into the darkness and try to live the deadened life of a Ghost. Fire seared his gut as he sank to his knees in the packed dirt, staring listlessly at the gate. Raging, yet empty inside as fire burned up all his emotion and left purposelessness in its place.

  In that despondency, he could suddenly feel his uncle’s presence. Solid, steady at his side. They hunkered together, for a long moment.

  “Maybe we can get you past this,” Ihbram spoke at last, his voice surprisingly absent of scorn.

  “You mean just drag me through the gate?” Khouren’s voice was cold with self-loathing. “You tried that already.”

  “No, I mean rehabilitate you, ghendii.” Ihbram spoke, patient.

  “Why would you help me?” Khouren spoke to his uncle, despairing. “Take your missions and your potions and go find the Kreth-Hakir, Ihbram. Go be the hero grandfather always wanted out of you. I’ll find my way.”

  Ihbram gave a tired sigh. Khouren saw his uncle take out a faded charcoal wrap of the fine weave silks that only came from the far southeast, running the charcoal silk through his hands. A shouf just like the gift from Fentleith that Khouren had bound his grandfather’s wounds with when they had parted ways.

  “Come on, ghendii,” Ihbram stood, tucking the swath of silk away and motioning with his chin for Khouren. “How about a drink? It’s not too early for a good shit-facing. I’d say we both need it.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Khouren paused. “Playing like you give a damn?”

  Ihbram put his hands on his hips and scuffed the dirt with one worn boot, his russet brows knit in the rising light. “Because I believe in second chances, Khouren. Fentleith wasn’t always the man he is now. Once he was an unholy terror, before he learned how to control his wyrria. I remember those days, but he and I reconciled after I cracked his mind open once and saw what was in there. He’s a storm, Khouren. Of all of our clan, his magic is the closest to tales of Leith – a true madness of rage and conflict. Fentleith always persevered with you and your troubles because he saw himself in you. Of all us surviving Alodwines, you are the only one with ability to match Fentleith’s, and he still believes in you, that you can be better then your past. Lenuria believed it, too, Shaper rest her soul. So I’m giving you a chance to make us believe, Khouren – that you can be a better man.”

  Still in his crouch, Khouren breathed out in the wakening morning. Something trembled within him to hear his uncle’s words – as if hope was a palpable thing, he felt it shiver across his skin on the fresh wind. With it came an ocean of doubt, threatening to swallow him as he gazed at the black gates of the city.

  “Choose, Khouren,” Ihbram’s voice cut the rising morning. “Now’s the time. Stand up and be a better man. Or grovel like a cur and crawl back to your master’s shithole. Forever.”

  A tremor rocked Khouren, as if a bell had been struck inside his soul. Something rose inside him as he realized his moment, a dark leviathan with edges of flame. It came with power, a devouring belief that some things were wrong and some were right. A furious knowing, that Khouren’s life had purpose – that it hadn’t ended when he’d left Lhaurent. As that burning darkness rose in Khouren, like a shroud of ghosts aflame in the scarlet morning, he suddenly felt strength.

  Knowing that no matter how he ruined his life, there was still something he had yet to do. Some purpose he had yet to fulfill.

  With a slow breath, Khouren rose to his feet. Standing strong, he gazed at the black jaws of the portcullis without trembling. “Lead the way, then. Show me the path to becoming a better man.”

  He would have thought Ihbram would chastise him again for being a zealot, but it wasn’t so. Ihbram led and Khouren followed as they moved up the soot-charred avenue into the city. Meandering in silence, the Scions of Alodwine moved like shadows in the waking day. People had begun to stir from hovels and rubble, and an impromptu trade market had begun in the broad plaza before the First Abbey. The Jenners had their gates open this morning, as they did for a brief period every morning, distributing autumn vegetables and fruits from their gardens to the hollow-eyed throng. Their ban on ale still held. Khouren saw no wains or barrels among the charity they distributed. Eagle-eyed Brothers and Palace Guardsmen gazed down from the walls, hoods up. By the way they stood, Khouren knew they had bows, invisible below the ramparts. The Jenners and defected Guardsmen didn’t like this new city under rule of Lhaurent, and Khouren didn’t blame them.

  At last, Khouren and Ihbram came into a wealthier section of the Abbey Quarter, towering bluestone buildings only slightly blackened from the fires. Ihbram nodded at a tavern and they mounted the bluestone steps and pushed inside. It was crowded despite the early morning, smelling of stew and vinegar, the sharp-sour tang barely masked a heavy reek of sweat and char.

  They pushed inside, ignoring casual glances. Khouren eyed his uncle’s worn Brigadier garb, then his own roughsilk greys. The both of them were filthy with soot, but no one in the tavern seemed to give two coins; indeed, they were cleaner than most of the patrons in this dim shithole. It had probably been a nice tavern once, but it was filled with filthy customers now, the floor strewn with straw to try and soak up the tracked-in soot, the straw littered with hulls of bitel nuts. Barmaids moved quickly through the tables with hard scowls and trenchers of stew and eggs, demanding coin before they placed down a plate. As Ihbram and Khouren settled at the chipped ironwood bar, Ihbram pulled out a beaten leather purse from an inner breast pocket of his jerkin and immediately tossed down two five-rou coins, far more than they needed to get a drink. The greasy proprietor barely glanced their way, coming over and swiping it off the table and replacing the coins with two pewter tankards of thin, odiferous ale.

  “That’s the lot.” The man grumbled, wiping pudgy hands on his filthy apron. “Show me more coin and get another round.”

  “Steep.” Ihbram grumbled as the man whisked away. “Fucker’s charging five times what his piss-poor home-brew is worth.”

  “It’s the best a man can get in the city right now,” Khouren commented mildly, “with the First Abbey boycotting Lhaurent’s takeover and trade stalled on every front due to war.”

  “So I noticed. Ale’s been shit everyplace I’ve tried. Not a trace of mellon-blume wine or a nice spicy Yegovian cider in sight.” Ihbram took a swallow of his brew, grimaced, then drank a number of swallows with stolid determination.

  Khouren contemplated his flagon; tipped it back. It was Aeon-awful, like a rotten potato mixed with sour peaches and the musk of fish. He gagged, then drank the entire thing off fast like his uncle. Ihbram threw more money on the counter and the barman returned, eyeing them before swiping the coins away and replacing it with another round of horrid drinks.

  Which weren’t as bad, now that Khouren’s tongue was numb.

  “You need a bath, ghendii,” Ihbram snorted over his flagon as they finished up the second round and went for a third.

  “So do you.” Khouren retorted sourly, already drunk and not giving a shit. His lips were tingling nicely, his head flush with a good buzz. It was the first time he’d had a drink in recent memory, seldom having imbibed while in Lhaurent’s service. “How’s your drink?”

  “Not as good as sex,” Ihbram scowled at his brew, but sipped again anyway.

  “Apparently.” The vapors of Khouren’s ale wafted up his nose and he coughed.

  “How long has it been since you’ve gotten laid, Khouren? Since this woman Lhaurent killed?” Ihbram’s gaze was drun
k but keen in the filthy translucence from the grimy windows.

  “Not your business.” Khouren drained his ale and signaled the barkeep. The man arrived with another tankard, palming perspiration from his brown hair. Khouren mimicked the gesture, unconsciously. His black curls were longer: even in braids, they touched his shoulders, longer than he would have allowed at Roushenn, but life was different now. Khouren brushed sweat from a stubble he’d not realized he’d grown.

  “Why are you in the city?” The question left Khouren’s lips suddenly. “What was it that you needed to talk to Lenuria about?”

  “I have news of Kreth-Hakir movements,” Ihbram’s gaze pierced him. “And I wanted to know if she’d seen Fentleith recently.”

  “Can’t you mind-track grandfather?”

  “Not lately,” Ihbram’s gaze slipped to the grimy windows. “Fentleith’s wyrric imprint dropped out of my mind near Highsummer. He’s gone off my mind-sight before, but never this long.”

  Khouren cocked his head, his interest piqued. “You said you’re hunting Kreth-Hakir? How? Can’t they break you?”

  “Not the lesser Brethren, not anymore.” Ihbram gave Khouren a sidelong gaze.

  “Your powers have grown.”

  “Indeed,” Ihbram nodded. “I first felt them jump forty years ago, when your bastard Rennkavi Lhaurent was Goldenmarked. Fentleith’s abilities got stronger, too, then. Harder to control. Since this summer, my abilities jumped far higher. Triple what they were, maybe more.”

  “You decided to try them out,” Khouren leaned forward, intrigued. “You killed one of the Kreth-Hakir, didn’t you?”

  “I killed four. Just a few weeks ago.” Ihbram gave a hard smile, his green eyes glinting with pride. “After my duties in the High Brigade were up, I tracked of a party of Hakir near the Elsee. That’s when I felt my abilities jump one night. So I said, the fuck with tracking, let’s try some action. I captured them one-by-one, prevented them from communicating back to the group. Kept my mind nice and hale while I slit their ever-loving throats. I mind-fucked the last one for information. He told me their Brethren were forming a pact with the Castellan. So I came here. They’re here, aren’t they? In the city.”