Goldenmark

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  Therel surged forward, but Elyasin braced her body and held him back, making him keep his seat. “What has gotten into you both?!”

  “Ask your husband!” Luc gestured angrily at Therel.

  “I’ve seen you, healer, touching my wife,” Therel snarled, rigid, his pale gaze ice-cold with all the fury of a meltwater flood. “I can feel you coveting her, undressing her with your eyes. I can taste the blood rushing through your veins when you have a moment alone with her, wanting to take her down to the moss and fuck her in my place. I can hear the dark thoughts that rush through your mind, how many positions you would take her in, how fast or slow, and where.”

  Elyasin’s lips dropped open. All thoughts fled as she gaped at Therel, horrified. But Therel was full of a deep, powerful wrath – a wrath that was his own but also wasn’t. As Elyasin watched, his purple and white inkings from Delman Ferrian began to light across his chest, simmering to life all down his arms and onto the backs of his hands.

  “I should gut you, cur—”

  “Delman Ferrian!” Elyasin commanded. “That is enough!”

  With her command, a blaze of light went rippling through her red and white inkings like the passage of a blistering fire. A fast wave of heat rolled off her body, and Therel blinked as if he’d been slapped. Something cleared from his eyes, and he breathed hard. His gaze blinked to Elyasin’s as he shook his head. “Elyasin, what—?”

  “He’s going batshit,” Luc snarled, “from that goddamn wyrria eating through his veins.”

  “Shut up, Luc.” Elyasin smoothed her husband’s hair to calm him while she pinned Luc with her gaze. Luc riffled a hand through his golden mane. His eyes went from bleak to furious to bleak again. And suddenly, Elyasin realized he was to shattering. As Therel calmed from his wyrric rage, Elyasin rose. Stepping around the brazier, she sank to her haunches in front of Luc. He wouldn’t meet her gaze, looking down and massaging his knuckles. Reaching out, Elyasin raised his face so their eyes met. A tear slipped from Luc’s red-rimmed eyes, then another as he met her gaze at last. Hitching a hard breath, he opened his mouth but nothing came out.

  “How many hours a day are you watching Ghrenna?” Elyasin spoke, gently.

  “All of them,” Luc gasped, tears leaking from his eyes now. “This trance... I’m terrified she’ll die if I’m not there.”

  “Aeon and all the gods!” Elyasin breathed.

  Therel had risen now, coming around the brazier to stand by Elyasin. And to Elyasin’s vast surprise, her King put his cruelty and jealousy away. Staring down, he settled to his haunches beside Luc. Reaching out, he gripped Luc behind his neck, pressing their foreheads together, then spoke in a soft tone Elyasin rarely heard from him. “None of us are getting out of here without you, Luc. We need you to rest. When are you sleeping?”

  Luc hitched a hard breath, but he let his King hold their foreheads together. “I don’t know.”

  “We need you to rest,” Therel repeated. “I’ll watch Ghrenna tonight. If anything changes, I’ll come find you. Can I trust you around my wife?”

  Luc looked up, pulled back enough that their eyes met. “Yes, my King. I swear. I’m so sorry... please forgive me.”

  Therel nodded. Immense compassion was in his gaze. Elyasin had seen it before and wondered how many times he’d watched men break on the battlefield. A vision poured through her. Of Delman Ferrian, kneeling before a soldier surrounded by a pile of bodies slain by the man’s own blade. The blood-shocked look in the man’s eyes. The way he’d breathed too fast, unstable. Of how Delman had cradled the man’s neck, just like this. Pressing their foreheads together, giving the man the steadiness of his King. Even as much as Delman had been a dark bastard sometimes, he had also been capable of immense compassion. A compassion that Elyasin could feel now, resonating out from Therel’s every sinew.

  Hahled Ferrian’s presence burst up within Elyasin like lava breaking stone suddenly, and she gasped. One moment, Elyasin was gazing at Therel, and the next, she saw Delman. Dysphoria flooded Elyasin, seeing two men upon Therel’s face. One handsome and lupine, his blue eyes bright. One pale and alluring, with strong cheeks and grey eyes, long hair white as starlight. A reeling sensation pulsed through her, seeing her brother Delman comforting his liege-man. Not her husband – her brother.

  “Elyasin?” Therel reached out, confusion in his gaze. “Are you all right?”

  Elyasin flinched from Therel’s touch and stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over the brazier. One hand out, she fell against the shard of milk-crystal on the other side of the fire. And suddenly, all that roaring energy within her needed to go somewhere. Without thought, only the feel of burning devouring her, Elyasin took all her surprise, her presence of Hahled Ferrian, and poured it into the Alranstone shard. Beneath her hand, the enormous spar of crystal groaned. All along its vast length, sigils of gold surged to life, sinuous like the blue-white of Elohl’s wyrric marks. And before she could remove her hand, the entire spar of crystal shuddered, groaned, and lifted from the diamond-flecked plaza, hovering a foot in the air and making the gilded ring ripple with light where it crossed that hallowed perimeter.

  Elyasin gaped at what she had just done. Everyone gaped. A resonant vibration from the crystal roared through her upon the power of Hahled’s screaming crimson wyrria. The fingers of her free hand clasped the gilded keshar-claw upon her breastbone, and it was scalding to her touch. Heat poured from her like a forge-fire and Elyasin growled, a sound she didn’t associate with herself at all. She panted, trying to breathe off that simmering heat but the more she did, the hotter it raged, until sweat poured down her back as she shuddered from holding the immense weight of the crystal bound to her hand.

  As if summoned from the grave, Ghrenna emerged from the dome nearby, stepping out into the plaza like a rare bloom swaying through a midwinter night. Luc stood quickly from his seat as she arrived, but Ghrenna stepped to Elyasin. Taking up Elyasin’s free hand from her keshar-pendant, she held it, and those drowning cerulean eyes swallowed Elyasin’s world. Elyasin stood there, riveted, shivering like a blown horse as she gazed into those infinite eyes. Ghrenna exhaled, and that breath eased into Elyasin’s body like a cooling wind off tundra ice. One moment, she was raging with Hahled’s wyrric fire, and the next, her heat sighed up on that vast wind, melding into it – strong.

  “Move the stone into the ring,” Ghrenna breathed, her voice like a nightwind curling through the etheric darkness. Elyasin felt that command sigh through every part of her. One moment she was trembling from strain, and the next, she was steady, moving her palm in a graceful dance and pouring Hahled’s fire out through it – guiding the elevated shard of crystal fully inside the boundary of the golden ring. At the sweetest breeze from Ghrenna, urging her to let go – gently – Elyasin smoothed her palm toward the ground, settling the massive hunk of milk-quartz back to the plaza’s surface.

  The energy released her in a rolling wave. Elyasin rocked, ecstasy filling her, and a song like the bowels of the earth itself. And as she stood there, flooded with life and wyrric power, Ghrenna’s wind swept through her again, calming that fire. Storing it back inside Elyasin’s essence, saved for another time.

  “What did you just do?” Elyasin breathed, astounded.

  Ghrenna’s lips quirked with a sad smile. “So it was for my lover Hahled, that it now is for you. Long ago, Hahled’s ire and heat would rise in a flush of fury. And I––” Ghrenna twisted her neck. “Morvein could direct that heat. Move it, wield it. Or smooth it out with a touch. Just as she could soothe Delman’s cold wrath, also.”

  “You directed me to move that stone.” Elyasin pressed Ghrenna’s hand between hers. “I felt you inside my mind.”

  “Yes.” Ghrenna’s smile was complex. “I’m becoming more like Morvein everyday. Just like you and Therel are becoming more like the Brother Kings.” Ghrenna reached out, brushing a lock of sweaty hair back from Elyasin’s face. Ghrenna looked unreal, crystalline like a blossom in the snow. Her cerule
an eyes were fever-bright. Her cheeks burned with a flush, her skin so luminous it seemed like snow upon shrouds. Her beauty was too fierce, those burning blue eyes staring out from dark sockets like a tundra-wight. She was beautiful, but it was a belladonna beauty – as if the wyrria surfacing within her devoured her from the inside.

  As if Morvein devoured everything that was Ghrenna.

  Ghrenna’s eyes broke from Elyasin’s, and she stepped back. With a deep breath, she turned to face them all, her gaze pinning Luc. “Though Morvein planned much, she did not plan for all occurrences. Her presence, her memories – they fill me now. And where once they tore my body apart, we have now come to accord. I know my true purpose – to bring the Rennkavi in our time and to wield the power of the Brother Kings to make that happen. But many things are unknown. Most of all, if I will survive this ritual we shall create, and the power I must hold to bring it to fruition.”

  “Ghrenna...” Luc reached out, woe in his eyes.

  Ghrenna held up a palm, and Elyasin’s heart broke to see the fierce love in her blue eyes. “You have always been in my heart, Luc. Though Elohl and I are mystically bound, I chose you, for years. And I will do my best for you – all of you – while I can.”

  “Don’t talk like that.” Moving forward, Luc gathered Ghrenna into his arms.

  “I have to,” Ghrenna breathed as she gazed up at him. Whatever Luc saw in her gaze, he didn’t protest again. With a wretched sigh, he set his hand to her neck and drew her in for a long, slow kiss. Elyasin’s heart broke to see it, and she turned away.

  To see Therel, a deep worry in his eyes. A worry that Elyasin knew was echoed in her own. A worry that they would all go mad down here, living in the darkness like rats. But worst of all, she worried what would happen if she and Therel continued to channel the Brother Kings.

  And if they channeled wyrria for the Rennkavi’s Ritual, would they ever be the same.

  CHAPTER 30 – THEROUN

  Elsthemen had been left behind, and the last vestiges of Theroun’s military career with it.

  Salt spray was in the air this evening, though the weather was cool and fine. Seagulls wheeled over the cliff-camp above the bluffs of Ligenia Bay with its scrub grasses and coastal dwarf pine. Salal thickets divided the camp between the pines, but provided extra autumn rations with their furry blue berries. Theroun marched the cliff-height, watching soldiers haul crab-pots up a hundred feet from the surge. Supper on the Ligenian coast was fresh swordfish and crustacean, mussel and tiger-shell, with seaweed of twenty varieties and seagull eggs from the cliffs.

  The Port of Ligenia marked the start of the arid lowland plains that stretched to the famed Aphellian Way – a region Theroun knew all too well. Only a league outside the city, the Menderian auxiliary camp was organized upon Ligenia’s eastern bluffs. Their first days after traveling through Fhekran Palace’s Alranstone had been spent organizing supplies and getting men re-formed into mixed regiments of Menderian, Elsthemi, and even more conscripted foreigners than before. The rebels that had survived, including Vitreal den’Bhorus, Jhonen Rebaldi, Lhesher Khoum, and the tall Jadounian warrior Duthukan, had been mixed back into the lowest ranks of foot soldiers.

  There was nothing Theroun could do about that. He’d ensured those particular four had been placed in a company together, but with his low position among the Kreth-Hakir, there was little more action Theroun could take toward their survival. Marching through the camp now clad as one of the Hakir and finished supervising the camp’s organization for the day, Theroun found himself grateful that his tall boots were soft as doeskin. Kreth-Hakir garb was lightweight but strangely resilient, and as Theroun strode past a cadre of soldiers emptying and sorting the evening catch, he ignored the scowls that tracked his herringbone-woven leather jerkin and silver-studded breeches. Red braids hauled back from her face and silt smirching her face, the tall Jhonen Rebaldi gave Theroun a dark look as he passed. Reaching out, she slapped the burly Lhesher Khoum on his filthy jerkin, and Lhesher gave Theroun a steady, chill gaze also.

  Only Vitreal den’Bhorus watched with curiosity in his sharp green eyes as Theroun passed, his foxlike face absent of sneer where he stood next to the tall Jadounian Duthukan and his brothers. They’d not spoken these past days, but the Fleetrunner Captain and Duthukan were the only men who watched Theroun with interest, wondering what he was up to. No one else gave Theroun anything less than hostile glares. If these soldiers thought Theroun was a traitor before, they were convinced of it now. There was no more leadership from any council, no more puppet Generals on this campaign. Lhaurent gave orders directly to his most trusted, and those men wore the herringbone black.

  And Theroun was now one of them.

  Taking ancient steps cut into the rock and giving a nod to Vitreal before they broke eye contact, Theroun continued up the high bluff toward a pavilion of red and silver silk. The pennant of the Kreth-Hakir Brethren, a silver scorpion on a red field, snapped in the high ocean breeze. Above it upon the pole was another pennant, a white field with a golden starburst and curls of white-gold flame. Theroun scowled at that showy banner. The bastard Lhaurent wanted all to know he was god-touched – ordained to lead by some fucking arcane tattooing and a questionable ancient birthright.

  Patience, Scion. Khorel Jornath’s mind eased into Theroun’s upon a silver thread, with a small smile of humor. The Rennkavi will have his day. And we will have ours. Hasten. Our command meeting awaits.

  Theroun knew he was late for the evening Kreth-Hakir command meeting – he didn’t need to be reminded. Jogging up and down the cliffs all day supervising various aspects of camp was exhausting. But Theroun found his body felt more hale each day since Khorel Jornath’s blood-oath. Mounting the last stairs, he gained the promontory’s rocky overlook. With a nod to four Menderian soldiers that flanked the entrance of the pavilion – so woven through with quicksilver that Theroun wasn’t even certain they had their own thoughts anymore – he entered the tent.

  Theroun allowed his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light, his gaze flicking to every corner of the wide rectangle before marching forward. It was habit, searching a room for assassins. Amused faces showed on the twelve Brethren around the stout madrona map table as he joined them, a breeze wafting in from two panels open to the coastal view in the rear of the pavilion. Setting his fists to the red wood, Theroun looked around. The Kreth-Hakir watched him, a few of the younger ones like Brother Antonius with twisted smiles, as if trying to hide amusement.

  “What?!” Theroun snapped.

  “Do not mind the teasing of your Brethren,” Khorel Jornath’s voice came from a shadowed alcove, where he splashed water over his face from a silver basin and wiped it with a length of red silk. Moving forward from the shadows, his own amusement lit his dark-opal eyes. “They’re not used to one of such power having so little idea of what to do with it.”

  “What do you mean?” Theroun snapped, irate. He crossed his arms over his chest with his usual scowl.

  “Searching the corners of the room with your eyes,” Jornath chuckled. “Expanding our minds to sense our surroundings is training every Kreth-Hakir receives within our first year as Acolyte.”

  Jornath stepped to the table next to Theroun. The man regularly stood next to Theroun in public, as if marking his territory. Theroun set his jaw. He belonged to no one, no matter some dire blood-oath, and eventually Jornath would learn that. A subtle smirk lifted Khorel’s lips, sensing Theroun’s thoughts, before the man spread his hands for the meeting to commence.

  “My Brethren, let us begin. We have news this evening. Lhaurent den’Alrahel has informed me that the status of Valenghia has changed recently. The old Vhinesse has fallen in an unexpected coup, and her sister has risen to her place. Lhaurent wishes us to take advantage of this instability and march out posthaste, to join the main army upon the Aphellian Way. We will maintain a garrison here to provide support and monitor the coastline for naval interference. Two shipments of recruits are scheduled to arri
ve from Jadoun in the next week. I would like three volunteers to remain and master them, then follow the main host in a week’s time. Who would enjoy this duty?”

  Hands went up around the table. Theroun knew the Brethren only raised hands or spoke out loud for his sake. Normally, these proceedings would happen mentally, unless there was a very untrained Acolyte in attendance, like Theroun.

  But he found himself impressed with the inner workings of the Kreth-Hakir. They were organized, prompt, educated and articulate, even those who had originally come from a marauder culture. They had systems for any occurrence, and functioned more like a council of peers than what he had previously thought was a pack-like hierarchy. It was true, they had ranks, and one had to mind-best a Brother of an upper rank to advance. And the most senior Brother on any campaign was allowed to seize control of everyone’s minds, as Jornath did for coordinated attacks in battle.

  But otherwise, it seemed damned egalitarian.

  Jornath nodded to three less accomplished Brethren with upraised hands, including the young silver-haired Valenghian lad, Brother Antonius Ossenheim. “Thank you for your service. I will give you an especial briefing at dawn before the main host departs. Please remove yourselves to meditation, and prepare to bend highly defiant minds in the next few days.”

  The three Brothers nodded and turned from the table, departing through the tent flaps. Theroun now knew the Kreth-Hakir spent hours in trance daily, honing their focus. Khorel Jornath eyed the remaining Brethren, mostly comprised of senior Order members.

  Calm and highly-educated, Brother Arlo del’Vonio had grey streaks in his military-short Cennetian-copper beard and hair. He made eye contact with Theroun, exuding a brusque but pleasant nature and smiled, his eyes green as the sea and tattooing of Cennetian alchemical sigildry rising up both sides of his neck. Arlo supported Theroun’s position as Scion, Jornath’s chosen replacement, and was Jornath’s top commander on this campaign. His position was Priest of Letters, which meant that Arlo was both historian and historical tactician for the group, as well as their resident authority on the arcane.