Sebasos shifted his stance, his black brows knit. “The main level of the fortress is solid enough, now that most of the timbers and doors have been repaired. We’ve got enough food for the winter if we supplement with hunting. The old armory beneath the Southwest tower has been unearthed finally. I’ve gone down there, and there are a number of useful items. Lances, swords, polearms, warbows. We ought to get it all lashed to available cats, take most of it to Arlen except for enough to outfit my fighters here.”
“General Merra, can you bring cats up in three days to transport weapons?” Eleshen asked.
“I can do ye one better,” General Merra answered. “I can have my entire host here by dawn. Tell yer rangers not ta panic and shoot at us – we’ll circle up around the amphitheater. Then help load up those weapons ye mentioned and be ready ta set out by the second morrow.”
“That will do.” Eleshen looked around, evaluating each of them. Khouren with his fervent eyes and quiet calm, with more useful Aeon-given talents than she could shake a stick at. Ihbram with his cheeky grin, ready with mind-blocking abilities against the Kreth-Hakir. General Merra with her battle-hardy fierceness, a seasoned war-commander of dangerous regiments. The brothers Rhone and Rhennon, clearly fierce in their abilities and eager to jump into battle once more. Sebasos with his implacable demeanor, a stalwart protector who would do them well and hold the fortress.
And Eleshen – stronger under the moon than she had ever been under the sun.
“So be it,” Eleshen set her fingertips to the tabletop, her demeanor hardening. “Let the Kingsmen make their last stand, or die in the attempt.”
* * *
Deep in the armory catacombs beneath Gerrov-Tel’s Southwest tower, Khouren Alodwine retracted his hand from the sword they’d both reached out to collect from a dusty wooden rack. Eleshen retracted hers also, startled by the electric energy that had rushed between them. Looking up, she was arrested by the intensity of the Ghost’s gaze in the flicker of the oil-lamps, though he said nothing.
Eleshen and Khouren had been working side by side all day, packing up weapons and armor. Though he’d hardly said ten words, they’d passed the hours in an uncanny understanding. Through all the bustle of making ready to travel, he’d never left her side, haunting Eleshen’s steps like a quiet, helpful shroud. A perfect gentleman since their kiss – almost too much so.
“Are you alright?” Khouren’s dark brows knit and he cocked his head, his handsome jawline limned in the lamplight.
Eleshen blinked away her trance, tearing her gaze from his and back to the crate of longknives and blow-darts upon the table. “We should finish this load. Then get some supper. It’s late.”
“Of course.” Lifting the crate to his shoulder, Khouren stabilized it with one hand. The vault was silent. Everyone else who’d helped move weapons and sundry to the prep area was long asleep after a busy day, and now only Khouren helped Eleshen burn the midnight oil.
Mounting the winding stairs, Eleshen navigated around cracked boulders that still partially blocked the underground access from the toppled tower above. She could barely hear Khouren’s step behind her, just a whisper of his leather boots. Gaining the upper landing, she moved out into an auxiliary courtyard of the main fortress, stepping around tumbled stones in a lofty midnight silence. The rain had broken at last, to a true autumnal chill with stars shining bright as diamonds above. The moon was a slim sickle in the clear sky, white and austere. Eleshen shivered as a cold breeze snuck in through her Kingsman garb and lipped across her collarbones. Blowing out the lamp, she set it in a niche, moving forward by the light of the midnight sky above.
“Perhaps this should be the last of it tonight.” Khouren paced at her side with his crate, through the chill darkness along the edge of the collapsed tower.
Pulling the hood of her Alrashemni garb up over her hair to keep warm, Eleshen covered her surprise at his sudden engagement. “We’ll secure this last crate near the Alranstone, then be done. We can do the rest at dawn before we march.”
Khouren was silent a while more, until they crossed under a vault in the retaining-wall and into the rebuilt main courtyard, passing alert guards at the fortress doors. The main doors of fresh-scented cendarie were shut against the cold, though torches burned in iron brackets. With a nod to the guards, Eleshen stepped to the cluttered path that led through the main courtyard. Her glance was arrested for a moment by the three-story pile of rubble that gleamed in the moonlight nearby. Mature trees rose up out of that broken darkness, like much of Gerrov-Tel. Lights flared in the arrow-slits of the main fortress, bright like fireflies, but the fortress was still barely defensible. Worry devoured Eleshen for a moment, contemplating the formidable task Sebasos would have making everything ready for winter or a siege.
“Do you need to find Sebasos?” Khouren spoke, tracing her glance up to the ruined turrets, his voice soft in the night. “Leave him extra instructions?”
“I just—” Eleshen paused. “Temlin left me in charge. I hate to leave before I’ve hardly even done anything.”
Khouren’s smile twisted, but he gave a genteel nod as they continued on through the clutter. “A commander must make difficult decisions in times of war. Sebasos understands. So would Temlin.”
Silence eased between them, punctuated by rustling cendarie trees and bullfrogs singing their last as autumn sighed in. Eleshen angled through the courtyard and down into the amphitheater where loads for the cats were being gathered for their departure tomorrow. Pale moonlight flooded the amphitheater as they moved through. Crowded with crates of supplies, weapons, and sundries, everything was nearly ready to be loaded at first light. Cats prowled in the darkness at the amphitheater’s rim like muscled shadow, the entirety of General Merra’s forces encamped just out of sight in the trees. Mirror-eyes flashed in the black, watching Eleshen and Khouren.
Striding on, Eleshen moved down the amphitheater’s crumbling steps toward the bluestone Plinth. She didn’t wait for Khouren, merely stepped down the incline, hands upon her longknife hilts as her eyes scanned the keshari presence at the tree line. It was a habit that had come with her new body, something she did as naturally as breathing now. Finding a likely spot, she paused as Khouren set his crate down atop a stack of others, a long silence drifting between them.
“I’ll walk you back to the fortress,” Khouren spoke at last.
“I can find my way.” Eleshen waved a hand.
“I’d like to escort you.”
Eleshen cocked her head at Khouren’s quiet insistence. She thought to say something snippy, when she caught a glimpse of his pale eyes in the moonlight, steady and fervent. “As you like.”
She turned on her heel and was about to stride back when she paused, arrested by the moon glinting off the Alranstone. Lit in stark shadows, something about it triggered her tonight: the angle of the moon; the presence of the Stone. It took her back to the first time she had been here, when Elohl had climbed that Stone and been given his Goldenmarks by the ancient king inside it.
“Elohl was changed after that,” she whispered to the night.
“Elohl den’Alrahel?” Khouren’s voice was low at her side. Eleshen felt him look at her. “You knew him, didn’t you?”
“Not so well.”
“What’s wrong?” Setting a hand to her shoulder, Khouren turned her so he could see her eyes in the moonlight. His frown was dark, a possessiveness in it.
“It’s nothing.” Eleshen set her hands to her hips and found the hilts of her longknives beneath her fingertips.
Looking to the Alranstone, something dangerous glinted in Khouren’s eyes before he glanced back to Eleshen. “Did Elohl hurt you?”
“Hurt?” Eleshen snorted. “Not really. But he didn’t really care for me, either. He dumped me to go protect his Queen at her coronation. I never saw him again.”
“He fought like a dervish that day,” Khouren murmured, a thoughtful tone in his voice. “He was pursued on all sides by Palace Guard. He fol
lowed his only choice; leaving Lintesh with the Queen and the Elsthemi Highlanders.”
Eleshen heaved a sigh. She’d thought it might have been something like that, though a part of her wanted to hate Elohl. “You were there in the palace that day?”
“I was. Watching from the walls.”
“You do that a lot, don’t you?” Eleshen quipped. “Watch. You were watching me when I was under Lhem’s knife.”
Khouren turned to gaze at her more fully, and the intensity of his presence under the moonlight made Eleshen shiver. “I would have intervened sooner. But Lhem was aligned with the man I served at the time. My obedience arrested my conscience. Forgive me.”
Eleshen took a deep breath, realizing that they were talking at last. Truly talking. Sharing something about who they actually were, rather than this dance of intense attraction and silence they’d had so far. “You saved my life.”
“I almost cost you your life.”
“No. You saved me.” Eleshen was firm. “Whatever you did with your magic, even though it gave me a new body – I don’t regret it. You saved me. Made me stronger. I have a new life now, with purpose in service to the Kingsmen, all because of you.”
“It wasn’t I.” Khouren’s words were soft in the night. “My half-sister saved your life – Abbess Lenuria Alodwine. She had a great wyrria and used it to heal you because I asked it. But the price of that healing was high. My sister’s magic resonates a new form for someone when it heals them, unless they carry Alodwine blood. Lenuria’s healing made this body you now wear, Eleshen.”
“The Jenner Abbess did this?” Eleshen blinked, astounded. “Made my new body?”
“Her wyrria chooses the form that serves someone best,” Khouren’s tone was melodious in the night, haunted. “A form that resonates with their innermost desires. Your new abilities resemble hers, you know. You fight like Lenuria once did. A master of blades, even with all her old moves. Her body knew survival. She was a demon in battle.”
Eleshen took a long breath. Khouren’s words made an uncanny sense to her. And yet, her new body knew other things than just impeccable fighting skills. She’d not felt anything the night Elohl had climbed the Alranstone and been Goldenmarked, but now she could feel energy breathing out of the nearby Alranstone like forge-fire. She could feel it, lifting the hairs all over her body. She could taste it like smelted metal on her tongue; an energy she hadn’t known before that now livened this new body to the depths of her soul.
“And this energy I feel,” she breathed, “this... strangeness I can feel flooding through me, and through the Alranstone?”
Khouren cocked his head, staring at her intently. Taking up her hand, his dark brows knit. And then lifted. “Wyrria! I can feel it... slipping through your veins. Did you know you were a wyrric?”
Eleshen blinked, comprehending but not understanding fully. She could feel it, sense this otherness within her, and had ever since her awakening in her new flesh. But it still seemed shrouded, dormant, as if it were yet to be truly unleashed.
“How can I have wyrria if I’m not Alrashemni?” She asked, her gaze perusing all the arcane sigildry on the Alranstone and its tower of closed eyes.
A strange light reflected in Khouren’s eyes as he gazed at the Stone also. “You don’t have to be Alrashemni to carry wyrria. Once upon a time, wyrria rose its cursed head throughout the continent, and still does, to a small degree. Stronger now, since Elohl was Goldenmarked by the King inside this Alranstone.”
“So you’re saying that wyrria strengthens in the world again,” she spoke. “Because Elohl was marked with a destiny that links us all.”
“For better or for worse,” Khouren agreed.
“Do you really believe such things are a curse?”
“For my family.” Khouren let out a soft sigh. “For others, perhaps not. But for the Scions of Alodwine, when the Wolf and Dragon wyrria rises in us, it always leads to terrible conflict.”
“The Wolf and Dragon. Battling inside the flames.” Eleshen blinked, recalling the colored glass window in the Abbey Annex, and the Goldenmark that had been writ all across Elohl’s broad back after his encounter with this Alranstone. “It’s an emblem of your bloodline?”
“Of conflict, yes. Unceasing conflict and a bitter darkness, that lives in our wyrria.”
“Is that all you believe life is? Conflict and darkness?”
“Is there anything else?”
The way Khouren said it was so bereft that Eleshen reached out and took his hand. Feeling some strange kinship, she gazed down at their twined fingers as Khouren gently clasped hers. “We may stand in darkness, but I believe there is hope. Dawn never fails to rise even when snows choke the night. If there’s one thing I learned living in the mountains for years, it’s that.”
“You sprang back from the grips of death. So strong. Like crocus of the mountains...”
Looking at her strangely, Khouren’s pale grey eyes were vivid in the moonlight, his handsome visage riveted. Reaching out, he placed his fingertips to her cheek, his thumb caressing her lower lip. Eleshen shivered beneath his touch, but found the intimacy not unwanted as something heated deep inside her. He heaved a shaky breath and let his hand slip from her face – though slowly, as if he didn’t want to relinquish the touch.
Eleshen was struck mute by whatever was rising between them. It was uncanny, a quiet darkness that gripped her yet gave her a light so bright she could barely comprehend it. She turned, shivering off the sensation, only to find a different sensation arrest her – the Alranstone calling in the moonlight. Entranced, she stepped down the ruined tiers to the monolith. But when she placed her hands upon the Stone, she suddenly felt inclined to do something she’d never done before. Setting her fingers to niches and the toes of her boots to rough grooves, she was suddenly climbing – her precision innate, her body coordinated.
It was a thrill, climbing. Feeling the danger of the height, knowing only her reflexes and strength could prevent a fall to certain death. Eleshen suddenly understood Elohl’s urge to climb the monolith that fated night, and some anger towards him cleared from her. In a short minute, she gained the pinnacle and clambered to standing upon the Stone’s top, taking in the arresting vantage of snow-shrouded peaks. Khouren was soon at her side. Breathing softly in the night, they gazed around in wonder, the moon blessing the glaciers with silver radiance as it held court over the world.
“I never thought the world could be so beautiful,” Khouren murmured.
“Neither did I,” Eleshen echoed, gazing around at so much beauty. “I used to think myself bright, but really, I have so much darkness in me from what Lhem did. But it goes back long before that, to the Raid of Quelsis. And the Kingsman Summons.”
With a gentle touch, Khouren turned her to face him. “Your darkness is beautiful, Eleshen. Don’t run from it. Lenuria’s wyrria chose this form for you, because it knew you are stronger this way. More able to be what you wish to be, fueling your life with not just your light but also your darkness. Do you know what you want, from your life now?”
“I want to be Alrashemni, Khouren.” The answer hit Eleshen like a forge-hammer, a truth that filled her core. “I want to be a Kingsman, to work through my Seals. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“Then take Lenuria’s gift.” Reaching out, Khouren stroked a hand down her long sable braid. “Take it, and become what you were meant to be. Your wyrria was kindled in darkness and bitter conflict, but maybe that was for a reason. Because you’re stronger with moonlight pouring through your veins than the light of the sun.”
Something fierce rose inside Eleshen, triggered by Khouren’s words. They saved her in a way she couldn’t explain, much like his sudden action had saved her that fateful night from Lhem’s torture. She stepped close, touching his silken garb. Opening his jerkin’s collar so she could run her fingers over the bare skin of his chest. So she could lean in and smell him – his curious scent of cinnamon, musk, and bones.
Khouren let
out a shaky sigh as shivers wracked him. One of his hands wound about her waist, drawing her close. The other went to her neck, gripping her nape and pulling her gently away. He breathed hard in the moonlight as he lifted those amazing pale grey eyes to hers, something in their depths burning gold.
“I don’t want to take advantage of you, Eleshen. I—”
Eleshen didn’t allow him a single breath more. Lifting up, she pressed her lips to his. Inhaling his strange cinnamon death-musk; feeling the tension of his body ripple all around her.
His tension broke. In a flowing rush, Khouren lifted her with his incredible strength. Holding Eleshen up as her legs wrapped around him like a midnight vine. Crushing her close into a kiss that had no end, only beginnings beneath the brightness of the moon.
CHAPTER 28 – ELOHL
An impromptu war-council had been convened in Merkhenos del’Ilio’s chambers inside the White Palace. All were bathed and dressed, Elohl and Fenton in rich jerkins of dark crimson with silver detail that fit them like a second skin, their ornate jewelry discarded like so much trash. Elohl felt more himself, dressed at last and clean of both the gore that had coated his body in the throne hall and also of the Vhinesse’s seeping taint.
His Red Valor attire fit well, a soft white silk shirt and black rough-silk trousers with black calfskin kneeboots with a high-collared dark crimson jerkin. The garb was not unlike the cobalt uniforms of the Roushenn Palace Guard, though Valenghia’s elite uniforms buckled up the front with ornate silver vine-leaf buckles rather than have a crossover flap, dark crimson leather bracers tooled with vines gracing Elohl’s wrists. Their gear from Elsthemen had been found in the Vhinesse’s private quarters, and Elohl and Fenton had reclaimed their weapons harnesses and blades which had been gifts from King Therel and Queen Elyasin, along with Therel and Elyasin’s signet rings. Elohl felt more himself with a satchel ready near the door, filled with his climbing gear just in case.
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