Goldenmark

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  They sank to their knees, throwing cowls back or setting a palm to their hearts and sword. Brother Sebasos took a knee nearby. His dark brows knit as tears fell from his red-rimmed eyes. They all knelt. For death, for today, for the Abbey. For the last sacrifice of King-Protectorate Temlin den’Ildrian, saving his people from a destroyer’s terrible wrath.

  Tears washed down Khouren’s face. His struggles passed and Ihbram let him go.

  “See them, Khouren.” Ihbram’s voice was rough, but proud. “See our people. They live because of your bravery today.”

  “I’m not Alrashemni. They’re not my people,” Khouren gasped.

  “They are.” Ihbram gripped his shoulder, turned Khouren to face him. “A true Rennkavi lives. You’ve seen him. Elohl den’Alrahel. And if a true Rennkavi has come, rather than this false thing Lhaurent is, then it is time for Khehemni and Alrashemni to unite. The Rennkavi’s dawn is more than just a symbol. The Rennkavi’s dawn is hope for all of us, that we can be better than these old wounds that divide us. So put yours down now, as I put down mine – as we all laid down our lives today to make a better future. For that’s what we have now, because of you. Because of Temlin’s bravery, and because he exposed what Lhaurent really is, we have a future. And we will use it to tear that bastard down and unite our people. Against him – for our true Rennkavi.”

  A lump rose in Khouren’s throat. He tried to swallow it, but it wouldn’t go. “She shattered the Abbeystone! Molli, she gave her life––!”

  “All the better.” Eleshen stepped up next to Khouren, reached out to cup his face. “Molli was a warrior. She suffered torment all her life at Lhaurent’s hands, and now she’s free. No one from Lintesh can follow us because of what she did. No one will know where we’ve gone. She saved us.”

  “But I never got to tell her... I’m sorry!” Khouren choked. “For everything he did—!”

  “I know.” Eleshen’s violet eyes were gentle as she gazed up at him, though tears stained her cheeks. “We don’t always get to say the things we want to, to the people who matter. But life moves on, Khouren. Life moves on and so must we.”

  Khouren choked, another tear slipping down his face. He drew Eleshen into his arms, burying his face in her sleek sable braid and screaming out his heart into her shoulder.

  CHAPTER 18 – ELESHEN

  Thunder smote the dawn. Bleary, Eleshen glanced up to the top of the ancient Alranstone at the center of the amphitheater at Gerrov-Tel, watching the storm gather. Wind stirred, sending long wisps of her black hair around her face as they escaped her braid. Clouds roiled above, twining the Highmountains, heavy with rain.

  Even the sky would shed tears for the great man they mourned today.

  Sitting with her back up against the Alranstone at the amphitheater’s center, Eleshen blinked away her long night of vigil and of visions. A pyre of unlit timbers stood nearby, ready for the day ahead. There was no body to burn, though the pyre had been draped in cobalt and white fabric as if Temlin’s corpse lay beneath. Tears crept from Eleshen’s eyes, stinging in the fresh wind, and she blinked them away in the red dawn. Visions from the ancient King within the Alranstone rifled through Eleshen’s mind, fleeting things. Visions of Molli and Temlin: two old lovers sharing a last moment of bliss, a reunion of love, before the Abbeystone’s decimation.

  Before being released together into the great Void.

  Tears slipped heavy down Eleshen’s cheeks. She didn’t reach up to wipe them away, only when the light lifted into a suffering grey cast did she see that she was not alone. Khouren Alodwine stood just beyond the Alranstone. Silent as shrouds, his body held an unearthly quiet in the lifting dawn, the grey-gold morning shining in his eyes as he watched her. He said nothing, only stepped from the shadow of the Stone, sinking to a cross-legged seat beside her. Awakening sunbeams found the highlights in his braids, and their color dazzled for a moment like a dragonfly’s wing before the oncoming storm swallowed the sun away.

  “Did you sleep?” Khouren asked in his low, melodious voice.

  “No,” Eleshen breathed. “And if I did, it was with the dead, without dreams.”

  “Sometimes death is better.” Leaning back to share her Plinth, Khouren extended his boots before him. Without a word, he pulled a breakfast of autumn peaches, hard cheese, and a pewter flask from a burlap sack in his hand. His somber gaze met hers as he offered a peach. Their fingers touched as she retrieved it – a blaze of electricity shivering through Eleshen as their fingertips connected.

  Khouren’s eyes twisted gold in their sky-grey depths, but he said nothing as they shared breakfast in a solemn silence. He’d gone off by himself after his breakdown the day before, and though Eleshen had seen Ihbram involved in the building of Temlin’s bier, she’d not seen Khouren again until just now. It was kind of him to have brought her food, and she managed a few bites of cheese and a few of peach, but it was more than her grieving stomach could bear so she set the peach aside. “When is it to be?”

  “Soon.” Khouren glanced over to the bier, his own breakfast untouched as he took a pull from the flask. Eleshen extended a hand for it and he gave it over, watching her take a long drink of a searing Highland-style whiskey.

  “Is everything decided?” Eleshen coughed, wiping her lips with her sleeve as she handed the flask back. She had been present for the discussions of Temlin’s last rites earlier in the night, but as the debates between factions had raged on about what kind of funeral a royal-turned-Kingsman-turned-Jenner should have, she’d lost her appetite for the proceedings and come out here to be quiet and to mourn.

  “Everything’s decided.” Khouren spoke, his voice haunting like a mourning dove in the suffering light. “Temlin’s to be awarded the King’s Rights of Alrou-Mendera. They don’t have the correct supplies to conduct such a ceremony, nor official seals of Roushenn or den’Ildrian coats of armor, but I found enough correct pieces for the ritual in the fortress’ vault. They’re ancient, but they’ll do for a ceremony of state. Especially in the old ways, since there’s no tomb available here.”

  Eleshen glanced at him. Khouren stared at the pyre, but turned back to her, watching her with steady eyes.

  “You found death-ceremony items for a royal in the vaults?”

  Khouren gave a somber lift of lips. “I found a lion banner. It’s not cobalt. It’s red, threaded with gold, and it has the twin crowns of the Brother Kings of Elsthemen on it. It was King Hahled Ferrian’s standard, long ago.”

  Eleshen looked back to the waiting pyre. A picture eased through her mind from the Alranstone, of that banner held high in a terrible battle over a bloody field. A wiry man with bared chest, wild red braids, and white and crimson tattoos roared to his army from a chariot pulled by two massive white keshari. Wielding fiery blasts of wyrria from his bare hands, his inkings alight like lava, he charged down a sea of foes beneath a blackened sky. The vision sighed away, but Eleshen was left with the feeling that the ancient King within the Alranstone approved of Khouren’s decision.

  That Temlin, in all his fire and fury, was worthy of the Brother Kings’ ancient banner.

  “Who will conduct the ceremony?” Eleshen spoke again.

  “Sebasos,” Khouren murmured. “Everyone agreed that he held a bridge position between the factions, as Temlin’s right-hand officer. I led him through the proper steps of King’s Rights, about an hour ago. He’ll do fine.”

  “You led him through King’s Rights? You’ve interred a King before?” A curl of curiosity eased through Eleshen, pushing back some of her grief.

  “Yes.” Khouren paused, as if he wouldn’t say more. But then added. “Unofficially.”

  Eleshen let it be. It wasn’t like her to not pry, but it was a solemn day, and her heart hurt too much to pick into Khouren’s secrets.

  He surprised her by speaking again. “The Jenners and Kingsmen have undertaken ritual fasting for the day. It’s the ancient Menderian way, a seven-day fast for the death of the King, though Sebasos decided that
all must break their fast tonight, as we are at war. He’s ordered a feast at sundown to celebrate Temlin’s memory. Preparation moves within the walls.”

  “A feast.” Eleshen gave a soft snort. “With ample drinking, I suppose. Temlin would approve.”

  “So Sebasos said as well.” At her side, the Ghost gave a soft smile. “You loved him? Temlin?”

  Eleshen blinked at the Ghost’s frankness, inhaling. “What is love? How can you love a man you barely knew? I met him too late. Maybe in another lifetime, we might have been something, but he loved elsewhere. And me... I’m too broken in love, I suppose. Unlucky.”

  Leaning her head back upon the Alranstone, Eleshen regarded its heights. Black clouds choked the valley, just beyond the Stone’s pinnacle. Gazing up at that great height, she thought of Elohl – of her slapping the Stone, urging him to come down from his midnight sojourn only to find him changed that dawn.

  As surely as she was changed now with this one.

  “Do you have something to burn?”

  “What?” Eleshen blinked, surfacing from her reverie.

  “On the pyre.” Khouren nodded at the waiting structure of cut saplings stuffed with dry wood and bales of straw underneath. “We’ll each have the opportunity to burn something in Temlin’s memory, as per the old ways.”

  Eleshen fell silent. It was almost barbaric, thinking of burning a token of someone she had cared about rather than keeping it, but as she pondered, she realized that she did have something. Eleshen rose and Khouren stood at her side. When she turned to leave, stepping up the first stair toward the fort he moved also, like a shadow. Eleshen turned and stopped him with a hand to his chest. His hand rose to cup hers, cradling it. She could feel the steady beat of his heart beneath his quilted silk jerkin.

  “I have to do this alone,” Eleshen breathed, though some magnetism held her fast. Reaching out with his free hand, Khouren cupped her cheek. Eleshen’s breath caught and she blinked, gazing into his steady grey eyes.

  “I’ll be here. Anything you need. You have but to ask.”

  She stood, riveted. Undone by Khouren’s honesty, by his fervency. By the feel of him, so warm and close. They barely knew each other, and yet, she felt his strange dedication; as if he would follow her, the moon behind the sun, every step of her every day. It was unnerving, and also thrilling, and Eleshen found herself caught – wanting to trust it, yet frightened to.

  With a will, she pulled away. He watched with luminous eyes, but let her go. Hauling in a steady breath, Eleshen shivered off their connection, but she could still feel it as she paced quickly up the tiers of the amphitheater toward the fortress above.

  The Northeast Tower of Gerrov-Tel loomed, set with burning torches in the grey morning. Eight guards stood at the portcullis in the outer wall – four in Kingsmen gear, four in Guardsman cobalt. All had hands at attention upon their sword-hilts or longknives. Eleshen stepped up to the restoration in progress, beset with scaffolding, winches, and pulleys. As she approached, the guard in charge, Sister Nennia den’Thule, saluted her in Kingsman fashion.

  Eleshen moved under the open portcullis, into the fortress’ bluestone courtyard. Blossoming with raised boxes of herbs and edibles, the courtyard was a labyrinth. Barrels of ale, sacks of grain, stacked crates of clucking chickens and other sundries choked the flagstones beneath oiled canvas awnings erected against autumnal rain.

  Kingsmen and Palace Guard choked the courtyard, splitting the last saplings into faggots for the pyre or bundling pitch and straw into torches for the ceremony. One corner had become the feast’s abattoir, where hogs and chickens were being slaughtered and trussed up to drain from ancient archways. Sprawling bluestone steps led to a massive set of newly-wrought red cendarie doors, ironbound and solid, the entrance to the main fortress. Eight more Kingsmen saluted her at the doors, though they already stood wide, the heavy beam that braced the door aloft on restored Praoughian clockworks inside the hall.

  Eleshen made a salute and moved past, into the ancient fortress. Ample like the throne hall of Roushenn, eight massive hearths stood sentinel upon either side. Two blazed, lighting a jumble of commotion. Every available corner overflowed with supplies, all the way back to the vaulted doorways that led down to barracks, and beyond to recessed alcoves that led to the kitchens and storehouses. Monks bustled through the columns, readying kegs of ale and barrels of wine.

  Eleshen moved through it all like a ghost. She slid around bodies, avoiding eyes, working her way to the rear of the commotion. Heading past newly-wrought trestle tables, she took the leftmost portal and trotted down spiral stairs into darkness. A single torch illuminated the bottom landing, set before an ornate blackiron grate, locked by a complicated clockwork of flowers and vines.

  Eleshen moved her fingers over the grate’s mechanism, in a pattern Molli had showed her over a week ago. Touching a florette here, moving a leaf there. Pressing a thorn, clicking a petal. Latches and gears moved as she worked the pattern, until the entirety of the mechanism shuffled into place and caused iron bolts to jump back. With a chunk, the ancient grate sighed open on newly-oiled hinges.

  Moving inside the vault, Eleshen slipped through shadows of the ages. Between the stone columns and catacomb arches, a treasure-trove which spanned the entire underground beneath the main hall above was housed. It was a mystery Eleshen hadn’t had time to peruse or catalogue in her haste to empty the Abbey. Strange items of forgotten times lingered in the shadows, coated in bluestone dust and cobwebs. Looming contraptions of precious ore set with jeweled stones, whose function she couldn’t even begin to understand, rose up like leviathans in the aisles. Crates of tomes and arcane items from the Abbey’s vaults occupied every corner and spilled into the aisles, stuffing the catacomb to the brim.

  Most of the dust-choked items upon the sagging timber shelves had already been here when they’d excavated access into the main fortress. They were inert; dead oddities that did little to claim Eleshen’s attention as she stepped to a corner where they’d stacked the books and scrolls from Temlin’s study. Her eyes didn’t need to search the gloom – the item she sought called to her like a siren song.

  Stuffed in a crate and bound in plain brown leather, the volume held a jumbled mess of runes pressed into the spine and over the cover. Reaching out, Eleshen slid her fingers over the volume, the leather chill as the vault in which it sat. Claiming it, Eleshen moved back through the dim catacomb, closing the complex gate behind her. By the time she reached the top of the spiral staircase, men flowed like minnows in the sea, toward the open fortress doors. Heads were bared, Jenner cowls and Alrashemni hoods down as all took up torches and began to light them in the blazing fireplaces.

  Ihbram den’Sennia and Brother Sebasos were in the main hall. As Eleshen neared, Sebasos handed her an unlit torch with a quiet nod. His dark eyes were somber as she took it, the gold and red cloth of Hahled Ferrian’s banner draped over his arm in smooth folds. Claiming her torch, Eleshen let it take up the fire that would kindle Temlin’s bier today. As if her torch’s light were the signal, the mass of warriors and monks and Guardsmen was suddenly moving like a serpent ridged with spines of flame, coiling out into the grey day.

  Setting out in solemn procession, there was no sound but the shuffle of bare feet upon stone, the soft step of leather boots, and the crackle of flame. As the procession gained the courtyard, the sky at last began to mourn. A fat drop hit the crown of Eleshen’s head, then the rain began in earnest, releasing the ever-cool smell of autumn. Pattering to the dry stones, it spattered the grey byrunstone until the dust darkened, showing the blue for which the Kingsmountains were famed. Like an evening sky opened up beneath their feet, the heavy clouds caused the courtyard to turn cerulean – until Eleshen thought that the mourners walked upon the heavens as they went to commit their King-Protectorate to the earth.

  Proceeding out of the fortress, the procession wound down into the vast bowl of the grassy amphitheater to the steady drive of rain. The amphitheater was
vivid beneath the simmering storm, and Eleshen could feel vibrations rippling from the Alranstone like the slow pulse of a heartbeat as the amphitheater filled to the brim with men and women, warriors and monks. Sebasos, four Kingsmen, and Temlin’s captains moved forward to kindle the pyre. Jenners stepped one foot behind the other, bowing in a formal wave with two fingers to their lips. Kingsmen set palms to their hearts and one to their blades. Palace Guardsmen snapped their boots and gave a salute, as all watched fire take root in the structure. The pyre caught quickly, bales of straw and kindling dry below. Flames spiraled high as saplings sizzled and split. Devouring the construct, fire twisted twenty feet up through the open clearing, making the oceanic blue of the amphitheater blaze gold.

  Gold, for the Lion of den’Ildrian.

  Sebasos fed the pyre, tossing bowls of ceremonial oil sweetened with wild rose petals and highmountain sage onto the burgeoning blaze. His words of royal dedication had come and gone. Eleshen hadn’t even heard them. He unfurled the red and gold lion standard of Hahled Ferrian, Brother King of the Highlands, blazing with glory beneath the bruised sky. The world wavered and Eleshen blinked tears. The standard was already upon the pyre. Already blazing with a ferocity as bright as Temlin’s heart – she had missed it. She had missed the moment of its dedication, but she found it didn’t matter, as people moved forward, each dropping an item upon the pyre now, something that reminded them of Temlin den’Ildrian.

  A strip of colorful fabric, a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, a mug of ale. One old Jenner tossed a hawk’s wing into the writhing flames, and Eleshen choked at that, even as she smiled. Temlin had been a hawk, and a lion, and a cur, full of piss and vinegar. Eleshen choked a laugh, wondering if she should just piss on the flames or dump a jar of vinegar upon it for her dedication, knowing that Temlin would probably snort from his grave.