Goldenmark

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  Jherrick blinked. His first feeling was rage, but the thought upon its heels was, can I? A vast desire pulled deep within his body, like a hound upon the scent, ready to be unleashed and only needing its master’s permission. But Jherrick was master and hound both, and when he closed his eyes and opened his senses to the Void, it was as if the leash upon the cur snapped.

  Something in him burst outward, devouring the Void. Filtering, sifting, following a luminous yellow thread from the finch’s memory that unwound from Jherrick’s own heart. Feeling how the little bird had made him smile. Feeling the sensation of feathers, the racing of a tiny heart. Like Jherrick had been drowned for years and could finally breathe, his wyrria raced out, flashing faster than thought along that yellow-white filament and finding a sphere of swirling energy coalesced only a few handspan above the newly-dead bird.

  Jherrick’s wyrria roared. He felt something expand within him, triumphant. This was what he was – what he had been born to do. A dead boy’s glassy eyes fell from his inner vision as he beheld the luminous soul of the dead finch swirling in the middle of the vaulted room.

  He could bring it back. He would bring it back.

  Without thought, Jherrick’s hands lifted, expanding his energy in the Void. Surging to the bird’s soul, wrapping that buttercup brightness in silver-dark light with violet and crimson edges. Guiding his wyrria in an intricate dance, Jherrick found the process innate. As his hands traced patterns in the air, caressing the soul, he found his wyrria understood death, how it felt, what it was – and how to capture it. His energy swirled around the finch’s, curling it into a luminous sphere, engulfing the dead soul. He felt a sealing sensation once he had it, like a doorway slamming shut in the Void.

  But it wasn’t enough to simply find a dead soul, nor to contain it from dispersing. Pushing his energy into the bird’s, Jherrick became one with its trilling death. As Jherrick’s consciousness connected with the bird’s, he found it wanted to return. It was sad it was dead, that it had been killed by someone it trusted. He felt it missing such a bright and happy body, and how it could sing. It had years left and it wanted to live them – to experience more of life.

  Moving like mist, Jherrick’s hands twined into that desire. He used it as an anchor to pull the bird’s energy downwards. Easing his hands down, he rested one upon the tiny corpse. And then he directed two fingers down into the bird’s heart as his other palm spread out, guiding the bird’s soul back toward its inert body. When the soul finally came close enough, it funneled through in a rush, straight down through Jherrick’s fingers and into the creature’s dead heart.

  The puddle of down and feathers seized beneath Jherrick’s fingertips. It shrieked, a terrible sound, over and over. Hurrying in panic, almost losing connection to his wyrria, Jherrick picked up the little being, cradled it in his cupped hands. And suddenly, he could hear music. All around him, he could feel it, rushing like a vast ocean, singing in a thousand harmonies like a galaxy full of harps. The music filled him, thrummed through his foundation, and he became it – weaving it through his dark-light nature and pouring that vibration into the tiny creature’s body.

  The music of the World Shaper consumed him. Eons of harmonies. Lifetimes of melodies. His mind strayed far into the Void, and it was not until he felt Flavian’s hands upon his shoulders that Jherrick at last began to return.

  “Look in your palms,” Flavian breathed by his ear.

  Still delirious, Jherrick opened his cupped palms. And there was his friend, staring up at him with head cocked, curiosity in its gaze. As he watched the soul-excelsior, it trilled a haunting strain, a wisp of the World Shaper’s melody that Jherrick had been consumed by only moments before. As if it could hear that otherworldly music along with him, and was filled by it also.

  “You came back.” Jherrick’s breath was a bare whisper. His limbs were filled with a terrible languor, yet his entire being thrilled with the elation of his success. Like a drug, the desire to do more consumed him. Red eyes rose in his vision. Shock filled Jherrick, a hard slap of reality casting back that red gaze. He gave a shiver as an unnameable dread spiked into his veins.

  “We will practice again,” Flavian murmured, giving Jherrick’s shoulder a small squeeze.

  “I can’t!” Jherrick choked out, terrified. “If I do this again – he’ll find me. The Demon.”

  “You can,” Flavian reassured. “And you will.” Reaching out, he rested a hand upon Jherrick’s shoulder, pouring warm light into Jherrick like Ethirae had done and pushing back his fear. “This is your nature, Noldrones Jherrick. Rarely have I seen a wyrria so effortless and ready to be used. You needed only initiation from us, not direction. Your body already knows the World Shaper’s movements, your wyrria knows her vast song. This was a trial today, to see how much you could do upon instinct alone. And we have found that you already know the entire process, innately. You are far more than a natural at Dusk wyrria, Noldrones Jherrick. You are a savant. You are ready to proceed, whenever you feel you can master your fear.”

  Gazing down at the finch, Jherrick found himself terrified of what his ability could accomplish, especially in the wrong hands. But even as he despaired, the finch fluttered to his finger. With a steady trill, it poured the World Shaper’s music from its throat, giving Jherrick hope that his curse could also be a gift.

  Looking up, Jherrick’s gaze fixed upon Aldris. He could see the cocoon of light now, that the Albrenni had encased the Guardsman in to feed his flesh vitality from the universe. Jherrick’s wyrria breathed into the Void, following a sensation of tigers and iron and golden grass, the feel of Aldris’ memory in Jherrick’s heart. As if expressing his thoughts, the soul-excelsior finch took flight around the upper gallery of the dome. Mirroring it, Jherrick began to pace the perimeter of the pool. His gaze locked to Aldris as his wyrria flew through the Void like the finch flew through the air, searching. Immense, Jherrick’s wyrria was like the entirety of the sky – untrained, but with all the potential of the universe behind it.

  A light step came behind him. Turning, though still immersed in trance, Jherrick saw the ancient war-general Archaeon with his burned-out damage and broken wings. Lingering by an arch with arms crossed over his chest, Archaeon regarded Jherrick with his ruined white eye.

  “Archaeon, welcome,” Flavian bowed his head, lifting two fingers to his brow in respect. “Our Dusk Warrior is investigating his possibilities this morning.”

  The ancient Albrennus nodded to the Herald, but his galactic gaze was all for Jherrick, stern. “I can feel your restlessness in my dreams, boy, coveting actions far more impactful than you know. Beware your wyrria’s eagerness to resurrect the dead. For that which you raise from death becomes your responsibility. A man’s actions when he rises, what he chooses to do with his resurrected life, become yours – writ upon your very soul.”

  Jherrick ran a hand through his blonde mane, his wyrria still hunting far away. Fear and eagerness mingled within him. And upon its black tide, nightmares rushed in, red eyes swimming up from the depths. “I hear your warning, I can feel the truth of it. But this feeling – it compels me.”

  “Regrets drive your ambition,” Archaeon stared Jherrick down. “And where there is regret, there lies the Demon’s opening inside us. Master your regret, and master the Demon’s voice within you.”

  Jherrick’s eyelashes flickered. Archaeon had read him; the feelings that plagued him. But beneath the regret was rage. Something rose inside Jherrick, bestial. Desire long suppressed flickered through him – to rip Lhaurent den’Karthus’ entrails out. To keep him in a cocoon of wyrria, alive and suffering, and drain him over and over. To resurrect his corpse and do it all again.

  “There.” Archaeon’s basso rumbled like an elder god, a knowing smile upon his lips. “There is the Wolf and Dragon I also feel inside you. Feel your conflict, your rage and violence. Open up and see it in the Void, the shadow of your tumult.”

  Jherrick’s heart gripped, feeling the burning ru
thlessness of his desires. Not able to meet Archaeon’s gaze, he lifted his eyes to the oculus as he brought his wyrria back in the Void. Jherrick could see it: violet-black and swirling with crimson; roaring around him in a miasma tinged with hurricane-dark rage, sorrow, and loss. His conflict was so thick, he almost couldn’t make out Archaeon’s fading-star form as his tumult gathered bloody light from the Void, feeding the rage and destructiveness.

  As it did, the shadow of a shadow surrounded Jherrick. A hulking shape with no dimension, just immensity. Not his protective aura that stood behind him, this thing surrounded him in the Void, and Jherrick trembled like he’d drowned in the darkest sea. Shivering uncontrollably, he felt darkness swirling in, choking him. Washing into his eyes, roaring in his ears.

  A vast cold, that burned red.

  He toppled. He didn’t remember falling, but he was suddenly caught by Archaeon’s enormous, ruined form, Noldrones Flavian upon his other side. Wings of light curled around Jherrick, tendrils of fierce benevolence. The filaments of mighty, broken feathers and hale ones brushed Jherrick’s jaw, his neck, and temples. Where they touched, the poison of the Demon was lanced out of him, drained like pus from a wound. Talons dug into his shoulders, piercing through his robe, taking more of the darkness and letting it flow back to the Void. At last, the worst of it was gone. Jherrick came to silence in the Albrenni’s grip. But he could still feel his conflict roiling within – a demon of suffering that would never quiet.

  “Not until you embrace it,” Archaeon’s words were quiet by his ear. “Don’t swallow your emotions, boy. Emotion is your power. Two ancient lines of wyrria move inside you. One hot with conflict, one cold as the shadows of the Void. The Wolf and Dragon battle inside the Dusk, and neither will ever go away. Embrace your conflict, for the vast conflict of what you still fear – being taken by the Demon – yields the bulk of your strength. Feel your conflict. Become the darkness... and then forgive yourself. We cannot divorce ourselves from our darkness, but we can embrace it, and turn it into light. Are you ready – to do what your power wishes to do?”

  Inhaling a breath, Jherrick could feel the depth of his loss roiling deep inside. His miasma of rage and suffering more desperate than any lost wolf. It choked him, burning, as he gazed upon Aldris through the wings of the Albrenni, wanting to undo fate. Aldris’ fate, Olea’s, Vargen’s – a dead boy who had died far too young.

  A dead boy with Jherrick’s own face – so alike they could have been brothers.

  “I’m ready,” Jherrick breathed.

  Archaeon suddenly gripped Jherrick’s shoulder, his talons puncturing deep as he reached up to touch two talons to the center of Jherrick’s brow – just as Flavian gripped Jherrick’s other shoulder and pressed two talons up to touch the base of his skull. Activation roared through Jherrick, a torrent of energy fed by the screaming conflict of his life. Emotions swept Jherrick as that energy raced in. He was a demon of wrath, of suffering. He was a beast of yearning and sorrow. He was the coldest depth of the universe and the brightest sun, swirling and churning and screaming with the power of his inner conflict. It swept him, chased all thought away. A primal roar ripped from Jherrick’s throat, his body bowing backward as the daggers of the Albrenni’s talons suddenly released his flesh like burning needles. Blood stained Jherrick’s silver-white robe as he staggered forward through the pool, his hands slapping down upon the corpse on the bier.

  Flooded with the vastness of his own wyrria, primal rage roared through Jherrick, in a bright, molten fury. Primal energy the likes of which he had never felt – never allowed himself to feel. Jherrick’s hands moved on instinct; one over the Guardsman’s heart, the other over his abdomen. He didn’t know thought or rationality. He didn’t know fear or joy or love. He only knew existence, and it was this understanding of living and death and eternity that roared through him.

  Feeling the grip of his hands in the Void, Jherrick captured the thread of Aldris’ soul-energy in his memory. The smell of iron, the taste of blood. The ferocity of emerald eyes flashing in the high desert sun. Gazing down, Jherrick saw the kingly nature of the man, dressed in finery for his death, layered upon his nobility in the Void. And like a lodestone for a shooting star, Jherrick’s wyrric perception of Aldris’ character brought the man home.

  Jherrick felt his wyrria dig in to that tawny light as it returned. He felt Aldris’ soul shiver as Jherrick’s energy roared around it, binding it, his hands digging into the corpse’s flesh and flowing over it quickly in uncanny patterns. Creating a funnel, a path down into the body through which Aldris’ soul could find its way home. As Jherrick raised his right hand, leaving his left gripping Aldris’ heart, the searing energy thundered down. The Albrenni cocoon was engulfed as the lion-tawny brightness of Aldris’ soul came raging back from the Void – ripping into the cocoon, shredding it.

  A sound like a brass war-gong rang in the darkness of the Void as Aldris’ soul slammed back into his flesh. The Guardsman woke with a gasp, his green eyes flying open, clear and terrible like burning emeralds. Aldris’ roar sundered the morning, thundering through the oculus-room, rippling the pool with whitecaps. The Guardsman thrashed in spasms as the soul-excelsior finch tore around the dome upon blood-red wings, its shrieks mimicking the man upon the bier.

  Desperation filled Jherrick. Fear flooded him, slicing his power and sundering his connection to the Void. He couldn’t find the World Shaper’s song. He couldn’t hear that endless tune that had restored the body of the finch. His energy was slipping; his control shredding upon the vast tide of his fear, watching his friend shriek and writhe upon his death-bier.

  And he was losing the man.

  “Help me!” Jherrick screamed at the Albrenni, desperate.

  He was vaguely aware of three forms surrounding him now. Noldra Ethirae was there as the Albrenni encircled Jherrick and Aldris with luminous wings. Archaeon stood behind Jherrick, and drew a massive breath. Setting his hands to Jherrick’s shoulders, his broken wings curled down, pinning the thrashing Guardsman with pinion-feathers strong as forged steel, the other Albrenni doing the same. As Jherrick watched, the universe cascaded through the Albrenni. The blood of stars, pouring down into Aldris’ flesh – stabilizing the awakening Guardsman with the immense harmony of the World Shaper’s music.

  A concussion imploded the Memorarium, making Jherrick sprawl over Aldris as the three Albrenni staggered back, Archaeon falling hard with a splash into the shallow pool. His broken wings curled tight around his body, shuddering, as a horrible sound sliced Jherrick’s ears. As the Albrenni rushed to Archaeon, Jherrick saw Aldris laying motionless upon the bier, eyes staring at nothing as his pulse beat in his neck. But the price for his return had been steep. Jherrick had failed to stabilize Aldris’ body as the soul came home, and now, Archaeon suffered for it. The ancient warrior was in spasms in the water, curling and uncurling with flailing death-throes like some giant insect. Like the universe tore him apart from the inside, all the power they’d wielded now ripping flesh and soul and wing.

  As Flavian and Ethirae pinned Archaeon with their wings, flooding the power of the universe into him, more movement rushed into the Memorarium. Six Albrenni Jherrick had never seen flew in, flooding vast flows of energy into Archaeon. His back against the bier, Jherrick was stuck in the Void, unable to return to sanity as he watched the chaos his wyrria had caused. Someone cursed – Flavian. Jherrick watched energy flush through Archaeon again and again, giving out to the universe through those terrible black burns. Flavian poured three times the energy through his own body as the others, searing like a falling star in the Void and proving why he was their Herald.

  But it was not enough. Like a desert funnel, the emptiness inside Archaeon devoured that light, tore it away from the eight Albrenni and spat it back to the universe as if their efforts had never been. Suddenly, Ethirae shrieked like an eagle in battle. As one, all eight Albrenni hefted Archaeon, flying him up and out through the oculus.

  Leaving Jherrick alone i
n the vast silence.

  Jherrick’s mind was still not inside his body from the shock of what had just happened. As if he watched from everywhere and nowhere, he slowly turned, staring at the man upon the bier. Aldris’ eyes were wide, terror behind them. His breathing was fast, shallow. And as they stared at each other, Jherrick saw nothing: no fire of recognition, no spark of understanding in those burning emerald eyes.

  With a sudden, primal move, the Guardsman was up. The magnificent crystal sword Aldris had clutched with his dead fingers flashed out faster than thought. But the resurrected man’s precision was off – his slice ripping across Jherrick’s shoulder rather than severing his head. Jherrick cried out in pain as blood washed down his arm. His mind returned as he jerked back from another sword-slice meant to disembowl him. Aldris snarled, his eyes flashing like emeralds on fire – but there was no one home behind those eyes.

  Aldris struck again. Jherrick pivoted away, fast, splashing through the pool. His mind raced. His energy expanded, searching for answers in the Void. And suddenly, he found it. A thread of his own chaotic crimson-rage wyrria was still lodged in the Guardsman. Flowing out from Jherrick’s lowest energy center, the origin of his fear and primal conflict, his Wolf and Dragon wyrria invaded Aldris, feeding Aldris with the power to kill and destroy.

  With a cry, Jherrick tore that final thread of wyrria from Aldris. The Guardsman fell to his knees in the water with a short scream, his hands dropping the crystal sword. He slumped, breathing hard, head hanging. A paroxysm of coughing wracked him, and he took a deep, rattling inhalation. A long moment of silence echoed through the Memorarium, the soul-excelsior finch fluttering to land upon a trailing vine that hung down over the bier. Cocking its head, it watched the resurrected Guardsman gulp deep breaths of brisk morning air.

  And then Jherrick heard the sound he longed for most – a short, wry laugh.