Goldenmark

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  “The army’s going to hear that.”

  “Not if we move fast.” Ihbram checked the short rope-knife at his hip, making sure it was secure, then set his fingers and the toes of his flexible boots to the wall, finding small holds. Then he was up, another ka-chunk coming ten feet above Khouren’s head. The line took up slack and Khouren set his fingertips to the wall, gazing up to watch his uncle’s route as the last of the light failed.

  Thrusting with his thighs, Khouren heaved upward, struggling to keep his diagonal motions as fluid as his uncle’s. The rock face was sheer, chilly beneath his fingertips, and the holds were small. But Ihbram was an expert, and set a true route with the best holds available as they worked steadily upward. Climbing wasn’t Khouren’s best activity, and he was all-over sweat when suddenly, fifty feet up, he felt the vibration of the stone change beneath his fingertips. All at once, the stone felt like a viscous liquid, and even as he thought it, one hand slipped right through. Khouren lost his balance and his footing – falling straight through the wall.

  He heard a shout from Ihbram as he fell through into a black void. Panic took Khouren, free-falling. But he was yanked to a halt by his harness, sending the breath out of him as it jerked up into his balls. His eyes watered, but living was worth it. Gazing down, he couldn’t see anything. There was no above, no below. No here nor there – just a suffering blackness permeated by a chill draft. Though Khouren’s vision was impeccable, this was unlike anything he’d ever experienced – as if the void ate all light.

  With steady hands, he hauled himself back up the rope. He came to the place where he’d fallen, feeling where the rope went through the stone to the outside. Sliding one hand through solid stone, he reached out. With a meaty slap, Ihbram’s hand gripped his, skin to skin. Slowly, Khouren relaxed his focus on his hand, without losing focus on his body. It wouldn’t do to pass through his harness and send both himself and his uncle plummeting to their deaths in this black abyss. Like jelly pulled through a strainer, Ihbram was moved through the wall by Khouren’s wyrria. All the way in, Ihbram set a fast bolt into the wall with a ka-chunk that reverberated through the darkness, anchoring them.

  That sound rolled through the void like thunder through a bottomless night. And then, Khouren heard an answering sound. Like someone hummed through a glass vial, a singing came back to him from below and far above. As he stared into the nothingness, light seeped into his eyes. Hundreds of feet below, far lower than the river-bed they had climbed from, he saw crystal towers. Thrusting up in a razor-keen maw, they whispered with a subtle blue light that went surging through their surfaces, playing through the deadly tableau below like a moonlit tide.

  “That would have been a bad end,” Ihbram chuckled, but Khouren heard the tension in it.

  “The worst kind of stop,” Khouren agreed, swallowing hard. He’d never tried passing through crystal pillars before. He didn’t know if it could be done, or if they would simply skewer him. The echoes of their voices amplified the resonance, the light below brightening until Khouren could see Ihbram’s face in the soft glow.

  Ihbram glanced up to the ceiling of the chasm, his face angelically lit. “Up there.”

  Khouren followed his uncle’s gaze. The ceiling of the vast cavern was a mirror of the floor – a jagged maze of enormous spires, spiking down like jaws clamping upon them, a subtle blue light writhing through it all.

  “Chilling,” Khouren murmured.

  “Not so friendly,” Ihbram agreed. He pointed right, and Khouren glanced over. A crimson stone bridge protruded from the wall they were anchored in. Spanning the chasm, the bridge ended at a set of grand stairs that regressed beneath a massive arch carven into the cavern’s wall. That wall was a maze, set not only with that one enormous archway, but riddled with vaulted doors and recessed alcoves of every size and variety, pockmarked into the stone. All those impossibly delicate archways led to stairs that regressed, tunnels burrowing up or downward into a dark unknown.

  “Must be five hundred of them,” Ihbram’s voice was soft, stunned. “Whoever built this place didn’t want to make it easy for anyone to get in.”

  Khouren nodded. Without a word, they began to move along the wall. Ihbram set anchors and Khouren removed rope as he arrived. Looking up, he saw there were actually crystal bridges far above, that appeared transparent until the eye glanced upon them. It was the same below – bridges and platforms among the crystal teeth that seemed to appear and disappear as they moved. Gradually, they moved the hundred feet sideways and down, until they both stood upon a half-moon dais that led to the stone bridge.

  Ihbram un-clipped the rope, his critical eye assessing the bridge. “Why the fuck did someone build a bridge to this solid wall?”

  With a frown, Khouren had a thought. Placing his hands upon the wall to the outside, he changed his body’s harmonics, vibrating his hands upon the stone. It caused a humming sound, and as it did, the wall began to light in fantastical whorls and sigils made of the same blue ether that slipped through the crystals below and above. Khouren could see veins of crushed crystal inlaid into the red stone, camouflaged until it caught that blue-white fire.

  “Beautiful!” Ihbram ran his hands over cascading sigils as Khouren stepped back. Looking up, Khouren could see the symbols created a haunting scene of winged men and women clad with bright helms and armor taking flight off a ledge into thin air, brandishing spears for battle beneath a blazing sun. The tableau was bounded by two columns and a high arch, as if a doorway.

  “The right kind of wyrria must create a door to the outside,” Khouren murmured.

  “Think yours could do it?”

  “Perhaps,” Khouren shrugged. “But there are no ledges leading to this spot, if you’re thinking about getting Merra’s cats in here.”

  “You’re right.” Ihbram sighed. “We need to find Arlen. If this bridge leads to the center of the fortress, we’ll be in luck. But all those doorways make my balls cling, Khouren. I’ve never been inside this place, but the stories I’ve heard are terrifying. Keep your wits close.”

  “Agreed.”

  Turning from the door, they clipped the rope to their harnesses, but remained attached to each other. Ihbram went first along the narrow bridge, shoulders tense and hands ready. But nothing accosted them and they were soon safely over the chasm. Khouren paused, eyeballing the wall now before them with its countless ingresses, as trepidation washed through him. “If the people who made this place flew, they wouldn’t have needed a bridge. So why build one? Trap?”

  “Probably,” Ihbram grinned. “But since when do Alodwine men run from a conflict? Just be ready to drag me through a wall, yeah?”

  Khouren lifted an eyebrow as he rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, and Ihbram did the same. It was familiar, their battle-routine of long ago – readying for skin contact to phase Ihbram through something along with Khouren in a pinch. Banishing distractions, Khouren regarded the massive archway. Far up in a shadowy alcove near the turn of the stairs was a cluster of crystals. He hummed, and Ihbram joined in. As if called to awaken, the crystals at the turn in the stairs brightened to a flowing blue-white, like milk and phosphorescent algae stirred in a glass.

  “Up we go,” Ihbram murmured.

  Khouren took the lead now – his reflexes faster in the dark when climbing wasn’t involved. One hand hovered near his longknife as he ascended, the other ready to clasp Ihbram’s wrist. But nothing accosted them as they wound up to the next turn. Another set of crystals in an alcove appeared, dark and slumbering. Khouren hummed to light them. They began to glow softly, when suddenly, something shot from the cluster. Fast as a strike of pale lightning, it lanced Khouren in the chest and he gasped, pain like a flood of bees spearing through him.

  “Khouren!” Ihbram rushed forward. The crystal shot another blast of vaporous lightning, but he ducked fast, seizing Khouren and dragging him back down the turn.

  “I’m alright!” Khouren coughed, rubbing his chest. Unbuckling his charcoal silk
jerkin, he hauled open the laces of his grey shirt, gazing at his chest. A bloom of pale wraith-vapor moved beneath his skin. “What in Undoer—?”

  Ihbram moved a hand over the wyrric marks, tracing their movement. “Damned if I know. You sure you’re not hurt?”

  “I’m fine.” Khouren blew out a steadying breath. “Though it stung like that hornet’s nest in Althumma we got into that one time.”

  “Not a fun time, that little outing. We learned better than to crawl through mesquite bushes on the Lhemvian Isles to scale that fucking fortress of Jhorenni al’Ban’s.” Ihbram offered a hand and Khouren clasped it as his uncle hauled him to his feet. “Different door?”

  “Different door.”

  Moving back down to the egress, they clipped in to the wall. Ihbram took them up a few levels to a different ingress, jumping down onto a balcony and brushing off his hands. The balcony entrance had columns carven like lilypads, with dragonflies and frogs hiding in the greenery. Traces of green paint adorned the ancient arch, with a rich violet color to the lilies and insects.

  “Looks nice,” Khouren murmured.

  “I thought so. Pleasant.” Ihbram flashed a ready grin.

  They moved into the gloom, finding a tunnel rather than a staircase, broad enough to walk side-by-side. Hairs prickled on Khouren’s neck, but it was only the air. Alcoves held crystals, but Ihbram and Khouren kept their silence as they passed and they didn’t brighten. At last, a glimmer of light ahead caught Khouren’s attention and he nudged Ihbram. They put their backs to the wall and inched toward the exit, hands ready at weapons.

  The tunnel opened into a vaulted space. Muggy, the air in the broad chamber had a sulfurous stink, and as Khouren glanced around, he saw crystals of every color glowing softly in niches in the walls. The chamber had flowing water, the burble of sound creating the source of the crystal’s light. Ripples of reflected light poured over the walls of the cavern from ten steaming pools edged in a white sulfuric brine. As they inched closer, Khouren saw the pools were lit from within, water moving over more crystals within the pools themselves.

  “Dangerous?” Khouren murmured.

  “I wouldn’t dip my balls in it.”

  Moving to another pool, Khouren gasped. “Shaper!”

  “What?” Ihbram stepped to his side, then blinked. “Oh. Shit. Is it dead?”

  The first pool had been empty, but this one contained a creature. As Khouren peered closer, he couldn’t precisely call it human. It was long-limbed and pale, with webbed fingers and toes, ripples of flowing fins emerging from its shoulder-blades and long thighs. It had fins for ears, and its eyes were closed as if in repose. Silver scales with an opal sheen shimmered over its bare body, in long lines down its decidedly feminine nakedness.

  In all his long life, Khouren had seen nothing like this. And from the way his uncle gaped at the thing, he suspected it was the same for Ihbram. Reaching toward the pool, Khouren felt compelled to dip his fingers in – to touch that long, flowing body, and stir the water around its fins.

  Ihbram’s hand slapped to Khouren’s forearm, arresting him. “I wouldn’t.”

  Khouren startled. Blinking, he looked around as if seeing the cavern for the first time. Glancing into the pool, he was startled to find not a winsome woman in the water, but a shriveled thing, mummified with grey-silver skin stretched tight over rotting bones and fins.

  “What in Aeon—?”

  “Something’s fucking with us.” Ihbram’s gaze swept the shadows. “There’s mind-wyrria—”

  Suddenly, the thing in the pool opened rotten eyelids, baring two pale, cloudy globes. A hand shot out from the water, gripping Khouren’s neck with furious strength. Only part of him heard Ihbram’s battle-roar as rotten things surged from the pools, launching through the water and hurling themselves at the intruders.

  Five of them were on Khouren, two more on Ihbram, seizing them with slick, webbed hands and talons like raptors. Khouren couldn’t phase through their grip. Wyrria pummeled him, surging from the mer-creatures. Fangs thrust from the creatures’ mouths as they shrieked, lancing cries that made the cavern blaze. Moving fast, Khouren gutted one in the belly, skewered a second in the neck. But a third sank talons big as knives into his leg and dug in.

  Wyrria flooded Khouren through those talons, the cold, dead feel of the darkest ocean floor. Overwhelming pain shocked him and he screamed, as others impaled him from the rear and sides, pinning him. He lost control – an unconscious fury – slashing wildly for throats, bellies, anything he could get. The odious horrors shrieked as he cut, slashing him back even as pieces stinking of high tide fell from them like rotten shrouds. Enormous fangs bit into his shoulder. That hand went limp as he roared, one longknife dropping to the cavern floor with a ringing clatter.

  Khouren could see Ihbram battling nearby, but his uncle couldn’t help, two of the mer-things still assaulting him. Khouren jabbed for eyes with his remaining knife, got one. The water-being shrieked, but claws ripped into Khouren’s back, digging into his spine and deep into his lungs. The horrors shook him like terriers with a rat, the last two of them that remained on him trying to tear him apart. With a desperate surge, Khouren plunged his longknife into the neck-muscles of fish-woman in front of him and cut her spine. She went limp, falling on Khouren and he managed a roll, flinging her body at the creature behind him, blood and acidic fluids cascading as he crushed the one behind, then skewered it.

  But fangs and talons were still buried in Khouren to the hilt, broken off from the mer-beings like a lizard’s tail and left inside his body. He could barely breathe, the pain unimaginable. The appendages of the water-creatures had been poisonous and his flesh burned with ice even as it healed, his body trying to repair as he coughed blood. He tried to sit up, but the talons in his back and shoulder went deep.

  He yelled for Ihbram. Through his agony, he heard fast footsteps. Ihbram’s face had been raked, his jerkin and shirt torn at the shoulder and chest, but he was mostly intact as he sank to Khouren’s side with a stream of curses. His green eyes darted to the damage even as he slit the throats of the limp creatures near Khouren to make sure they were dead.

  “I’m healing around the talons and fangs!” Khouren managed. “They’re poison!”

  “Fuck!” Ihbram cursed. All of Leith’s line had fast healing, but Khouren’s was uncanny. Quickly, Ihbram readied one longknife as Khouren gasped, his insides full of caustic ice. With a roar, Ihbram thrust his knife into Khouren’s shoulder. Flicking his blade, he popped the fangs out with his knife-point, to a gush of blood as Khouren screamed in agony. Some artery had torn and his vision swam, his eyelids flickering.

  “Stay with me!” Ihbram growled, slapping Khouren’s face with his free hand.

  Fighting unconsciousness, Khouren gasped as Ihbram set his knife to Khouren’s back, slicing faster than a surgeon on a battlefield. He ripped the claws out of Khouren’s healing flesh, and Khouren coughed blood, vomited. With the impalements gone, he fought for air. But things were wrecked deep inside, poisoned, gushing bile and blood. His lungs wouldn’t obey and a whistling came from his punctured chest as he spasmed.

  His vision flared white and the world fuzzed out.

  “Khouren, stay with me!!”

  Stay with me.

  His uncle’s wyrric command blossomed through Khouren like an emerald ocean, tingeing Khouren’s fading world green like gazing through a peridot crystal at dawn. Part of Khouren wanted to die, thought he should die, for all the terrible things he’d caused in this life. But his uncle’s command seized him, filling Khouren to the brim until he could feel nothing but the fire of Leith’s line burning in his veins.

  Suddenly, another face swam into Khouren’s vision – a heart-shaped face with sleek black hair, eyes like violets in the rain. Khouren roared, the sound of beasts in torment as the Wolf and Dragon fought within him. His body spasmed upon the cavern floor and Khouren screamed as fire filled him. Raging to die, raging to live. Raging to love and be loved. An
d with it came healing; uncanny, racing through his body. Muscles knit as Khouren spasmed. Poison was neutralized, sinews rejoined, arteries surged closed. His lungs popped back with a deep wrenching that made Khouren cry out.

  And then it was done. The fire left him; everything left him, and Khouren’s mind evaporated upon the emptiness in its wake. Above him, his uncle was crying. Tears slipped down Ihbram’s face, his eyes red-rimmed in the fey light as he helped Khouren up to sitting.

  “You ass!” Grasping Khouren’s head, Ihbram set their foreheads together, half-laughing. “Gods of the sands, don’t you ever scare me like that again! There are few enough of us left as is. We can’t afford to lose you! Not now, not after everything...!”

  “Maybe it would be better if I was dead.” Tears stung Khouren’s eyes. “I cause ruin.”

  “Don’t be daft!” Ihbram gave him a little shake. “We love you. Even your grandfather. And Eleshen – Don’t throw all that away, Khouren! She loves you, you fucking idiot!”

  Khouren swallowed hard as tears slipped down his face. “How can I ever make it right? All the people Lhaurent’s killed because I gave him power? What if he kills her?”

  “We’ll find a way, ghendii. We’ll find it together.”

  Ihbram pulled Khouren into his arms, hugging his nephew fiercely amidst the stench of reeking fish. Khouren seized his uncle, feeling the comfort of family before he pulled back and Ihbram let him go. Gazing down, Khouren found he was a mess. Blood and limpid scales desecrated everything, his shirt and charcoal jerkin ripped to pieces. And though everything still ached, he pushed to standing and discovered that his body obeyed.

  “Damn if that wasn’t thrice-fine wyrria, Khouren,” Ihbram’s eyes were impressed as his gaze roved Khouren’s mangled gear. “You had five of those things on you, fuck if each one wasn’t strong enough for seven men.”

  “Conflict has its uses.”

  “I’ve never seen you heal that fast before. Not even at Lintesh.” Ihbram opened Khouren’s rent shirt, gazing at the flow of etheric light that still trickled through his skin from where the crystal had seared him earlier. Khouren’s skin was immaculate, not a scratch left behind.