Goldenmark

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  Holding his breath and honing his hearing, Khouren paused, listening.

  “And you say Delennia’s longriders are just northeast of Vennet?” Arlen growled, piercing the big man with his fierce blue gaze in the wan flickering of the small lantern. “How many?”

  “We bring four thousand Red Valor cavalry lancers,” the tattooed bald man spoke, hushed. “She’ll be here by dawn, Arlen. I must get back to the main host. I know our combined forces still do not even your odds, but what reply can I give my mistress?”

  “You can very well reply that we’ll blaze from this fortress the moment we see her crimson on the horizon, Emeris,” Arlen spoke back, somber but fierce. “Delennia’s arrival is the best odds we can muster, even if we are still a few thousand short. I will make use of her drive, to the last man or woman standing, you can be sure of that. I still can’t imagine how she ever decided to come to my aid, though.”

  The enormous man chuckled, placing a hand on Arlen’s shoulder. “She loves you more than you know, my Lance. She never stopped, even though she’s hated you this whole while, also. Grunnach was quite convincing with the gifts he brought, though I hate to admit it.”

  “So I take it Dherran arrived in one piece?” Arlen’s smile was pleased, yet sad.

  “He was demon in that throne hall.” The big man chuckled again. “You should have seen it. Wyrria like one never would have guessed. He reset time. You would have been proud.”

  “And his trigger?” Arlen’s words were so soft, Khouren could hardly hear.

  “Your daughter,” the big man Emeris spoke solemnly. “She was stabbed by the Vhinesse, through the heart. He reset time, changed that event. Bringing Aelennia down instead.”

  “Indeed.” Arlen’s gaze was infinite, and something in it vastly sad. At last, he heaved a breath, his iron-eagle gaze fixing upon Emeris once more. “Return to Delennia. Tell her we’ll be ready. And tell her... I’m sorry.”

  “Tell her that yourself, my Lance.” With a secret smile and a nod of his chin so deep it was almost a bow, the big man cracked his knuckles and walked toward the wet ledge, slinging himself over the side by a set of grappling hooks and out of sight. Arlen watched the space where he’d gone, one hand upon his sword. But there was no commotion from the Menderian camp, no sound other than the driving of the rain. With a small smile, his gaze far to the south, Arlen extinguished his lantern, then turned in the darkness and made his way back through the deep halls.

  Khouren found his heart beating hard inside his pillar, his mind whirling. They had reinforcements coming. He didn’t know how or why, and most of the conversation had been Ghreccan to him, but it was an advantage he was not about to waste. Moving silently to the ledge, Khouren found rough handholds and eased himself down the narrow ledges, moving carefully on the slick stone. Before long, he was down at the river’s rim, slipping into the water like ghosts through sepulchers as the rain pelted down around him.

  With silent stealth, Khouren emerged upon the south side of the river. Making sure his hood and face wrap were in place, he was a specter in the steady rain. Just a shadow moving over the muddy ground in the darkness, not a squelch to his footfalls. His heart blew with cold readiness as he paced west, to the oiled canvas tent he’d noted earlier in the day. Sentries huddled around spitting braziers as he passed, miserable. They didn’t see him. Khouren’s own darkness was ever his friend, and no man wanted to see true dark on a night like this. Khouren couldn’t blame them. These men were just doing what they were told.

  Soldiers convinced to give their all for Lhaurent – just as Khouren had once done.

  But he was finished with that now. As he slit the throat of a sentry with a fast headlock and a quick strike, his mind was already upon his objective. A second sentry was stabbed through his throat before he could shout, eyes bulging as Khouren eased him down to the splattered mud.

  “Be thankful you died this way, rather than what’s to come,” Khouren blessed him as the man’s soul left his eyes.

  Ducking under the oiled canvas tent-flap, Khouren surveyed his mark. It was utterly dark inside, rain spattering hard upon the covering above. Shadows upon shadows devoured the interior, no one so idiotic as to light a torch or a lantern in this tent, if Khouren guessed rightly what it contained. Moving through the wooden shelving and racks, Khouren smiled beneath his wet facewrap, knowing his guess had been right. All those barrels with their pretty sachets of powder. All those hundreds of palm-sized porcelain pots, lined up in neat rows. Khouren was darkness itself as he stole back outside. He was a knife in the night as he slit the throat of a sentry moving by with a torch. He was the thief of all thieves as he stole back into the tent with the torch casting a guttering light – as he opened a row of flammable ceramic jars.

  Moving his torch over them all, setting each and every one of them alight.

  The green-gold fire of Pythian resin surged to life, roaring with an eagerness to destroy; to maim and ruin. Khouren watched it spring to life as a vicious light took his eyes. Taking up two of those flaming pots in his gloved hands, he went to the tent-flap – hurling them out into the night. Fire exploded in a group of tents nearby. Screams rose. Khouren went back and seized another two, hurling those after the first. Another burst came from where he’d thrown the second volley. Moving with strong strides, he seized more burning pots of Pythian resin and hurled them as far as he could. Horses screamed at the picket lines. Men were up now, dashing through the driving rain. Muddled in a melee as fire exploded to life all around for the second time in as many nights.

  But far worse.

  The peal of hammers striking bronze bells came, as the tent containing the poisons and resins caught fire from the burning splatter. Twisting emerald flames erupted all around Khouren, pots blazing in every direction. Still, Khouren seized burning ceramic urns and hurled them. His gloves had burned away. His hands caught fire, searing with pain. But Khouren’s mind was lost to the specter of the flames, bright and terrible. As his skin seared and his clothing charred away, his weapons harness snapping off, his hair searing up to his scalp with the blistering scent of burning animal, he smiled a ghastly smile. He was death. He was glory. He was the wraith in the darkness, but now he was a burning torch as fire consumed him, a beacon of destruction in the night.

  The tent disintegrated from exploding pots of resin. Khouren hurled pots in every direction, volley after volley. Into a smithy, racks of swords and armor consumed by spring-gold flame. Into a picket-line of horses, causing them to rear and scream, scattering as their tethers and withers were eaten away by caustic resin. Into groups of soldiers shielding their faces from the flames as Khouren roared out to the thunder of fire and rain. Roaring out all his pain, all his passion. All his rage, all his glory. All his love and all his hate.

  All the power of his endlessly conflicted wyrria.

  With a burst of energy, Khouren’s wyrria overtook the fire. As fast as his skin charred, it was replaced. Burning resin ate through sinew and bone and Khouren’s own wyrria replaced everything just as fast. Devil’s Breath charred upon the blaze, but his lungs heaved like bellows, replenishing his tissues as they were poisoned. Sinew surged to life, muscle replenished. New skin flowed, spitting resin out of his body in spatters of flame that arced into the rain. Flowing down around his shoulders, his hair was restored even as it burned again.

  The Menderian camp twisted with green fire. A volley of arrows was launched, but Khouren’s wyrria was untouchable now within the flames of his majesty. As fire and sinew flowed, the arrows passed through him, thudding into burning canvas and timber behind.

  Khouren’s smile was darkness, his eyes opal annihilation as he walked out from the burning, men cowering back from him all around.

  CHAPTER 35 – DHERRAN

  A sickle moon shone high above the Vhinesse Delennia Oblitenne’s forces, wan in the night. Its silver glow cast the fields outside Vennet in an odd hush, made even more strange by the humps of blackened char to either side
of the road. A swath of destruction had been revealed by the pre-dawn moon for the last five leagues, as Delennia’s forces marched from Quelsis to Vennet. Blackened farmsteads punctuated horrific scenes of eviscerated cows and sheep, livestock left to rot piled in the moonlit ditches.

  Dherran shivered upon his roan gelding, the ten-abreast column of four thousand Red Valor cavalry lancers progressing at a brisk walk along the rocky highway. Many of Delennia’s company had secured a cloth over their noses and mouths at the stench, and Dherran, Grump, Delennia, and Khenria had done the same at the lead of the army. Coming through this decimation at night, having pushed their march out of Velkennish this past week, Delennia had sent her man Emeris on ahead to find out if their path to Arlen’s fortress was clear, or if they would face an army on the road. And though they had come across no one, the road smelled like an abattoir, char and bile and rotting things wafting to Dherran’s tongue with every breath.

  Dherran glanced over from his roan gelding. Delennia sat tall upon a stallion so white it shone silver beneath the high moon, matching her long silver braid and an ornate Valenghian war-saddle. The new Vhinesse’s gaze was grim as she gazed over the silvered landscape. Dherran saw Khenria shiver in her buckled crimson leathers, Red Valor battle-gear that suited her well. They were all clad like Red Valor, except Delennia, who wore chevron-slashed crimson and black leathers with blackened steel fittings. An older style of Valenghian battle-gear, and one that bore the crest of her house burned into the leather chest-plate. Apparently, it was the gear Delennia had worn during her first coup against the Vhinesse her sister.

  It made for an interesting statement.

  Delennia’s coronation as the new Vine of Valenghia had been performed with the appropriate pomp the previous week. Though the populace had been stunned at the sudden coup, there had been no riots. Apparently, changes in Valenghian rulership were often bloody, rivalries between the Royal Houses a vicious thing, and dignitaries and commoners alike had taken it in stride.

  The Red Valor had bowed to Delennia as their new commander and head of the Valenghian Lothren, led by Merkhenos before he spirited Elohl and Fenton away to the war-front. Grump had disappeared for a number of nights, returning to the palace exhausted and filthy, his charcoal assassin-gear crispy with the dried blood of other men. Dherran and Khenria had asked no questions, and Grump had supplied no explanation, only insinuating that Delennia’s naysayers had been permanently removed from the Valenghian Lothren. For her part, Delennia had made provisions for the security of her palace and nation, including trying to have the Alranstone in the bottom of the White Palace toppled to prevent Lhaurent’s movements. When that had failed, she’d set a guard of a hundred Red Valor on that passage – with orders to kill anyone who came through on sight.

  All in all, the coup had gone rather well. But now, traveling the long dark road from Quelsis to Vennet, it wasn’t hard to see why Delennia was perturbed. Though Lhaurent’s forces to subdue Arlen had been Menderian, they had been coerced into razing their homeland.

  “Well, the Scorpions have been busy.” As if reading Dherran’s mind, Grump gave a harrumph to Dherran’s left, where he rode upon a short grey gelding beneath the sickled moon.

  “This is their doing?” Dherran glanced to him as they walked the horses past a pile of black flesh that might once have been a sheep.

  “Indeed, Dherran,” Grump waved a hand at a burnt-out farmstead huddling in a charred grove of matchsticks to the left of the road. “This is Kreth-Hakir work – encouraging Menderian soldiers to commit atrocity against their own people for Lhaurent! But what have we not seen that one would expect in such a cruel invasion?”

  Dherran glanced around, noting downed sing-leaf and alder trees where a farmstead had torched the brush nearby. It was a wonder that the whole forest hadn’t caught flame, dry as it was. But heavy black thunderheads sat firm above the trees to the west, the brisk smell of rain wafting upon the midnight air despite the stench. “It’s pretty grisly, Grump. I think we’ve seen it all.”

  “No bodies.” Khenria spoke up, riding upon Dherran’s flank. “Lhaurent sends a message, that any who oppose him will lose their lands and livelihood with all this decimation. But we’ve not seen human bodies.”

  Delennia glanced over to Khenria, and Dherran thought he saw the hint of a smile lift her lips before they set in a hard line once more.

  “Which means,” Grump continued, waving a hand to indicate the charred farms on either side of the road, “that Arlen had a very good warning system. He knew exactly when Lhaurent’s forces marched from Quelsis and how fast. Arlen got his people and his surrounding noble allies and their retainers out ahead of Lhaurent’s army, to his contingency location.”

  Rounding a line of cyprus trees, they saw a blockade of dead cows stretching across the road. Delennia flicked her fingers to one of her captains and he moved his horse forward, summoning riders from the front of the column. The blockade was set upon, Valormen hitching ropes to rotting legs or horns, then to their saddles. Whipping their horses lightly, they began to drag the carcasses into the ditch, which the trained war-horses did with only minimal tossing of their heads.

  “Why didn’t Lhaurent’s forces just take the livestock?” Khenria asked as they waited.

  “Vicious statements spread fear.” Delennia’s answer was cold in the slanting moonlight, the roiling clouds at the edge of the forest beginning to swallow the night. “Lhaurent is no fool. He wanted the Vhinesse’s army to see this if she pushed into the interior. An invading army will become skittish if they see that a king is willing to ruin his own lands to deal with insurgents. What more would he do to invaders? My sister would have thought twice about that. She might have turned around, fearing a trap.”

  “And you?” Dherran directed his question at the Vhinesse.

  “I know it’s a trap.” Delennia returned his gaze squarely, her pale eyes shining under the disappearing moonlight. “We march a force of four thousand upon a force of at least eight thousand. My Valormen are elite, but it’s still a numbers game, one that is not in our favor. Lhaurent knew my sister had committed the bulk of her strength at the Aphellian Way. And clearly, he has forces in reserve from their little arrangement, enough to siege Arlen into the ground if he so wishes.”

  The road was clearing, as Red Valor lancers in the column behind Dherran idled upon their horses, checking swords, reins, and sundry. Dherran saw how they passed the time just like Alrashemni Kingsmen – never a lost moment to prepare for an upcoming battle. Red Valor from the Stone Valley and Long Valley had been co-opted into this push, in addition to Valormen from Velkennish. The upcoming engagement would use Khehemni to liberate Alrashemni, the Red Valor predominantly Khehemni in their ranks. Most didn’t know or care about Khehemni-Alrashemni feuding, raised in their cities to become elite fighters for the crown.

  But those that did, had given Delennia fierce looks when she had addressed them at the Stone Valley five days ago. And yet, they had organized under her will. Whether it was simply for a chance to invade Alrou-Mendera, or because they were consummately loyal to their Living Vine, Dherran couldn’t say. But he’d felt Delennia spread her powers during that speech, soothing unrest. She had Oblitenne wyrria, and she’d used it to get the Red Valor behind her.

  “So we march, knowing Lhaurent has a good chance of besting us? Why would you take such a gamble?” Khenria bristled, staring at her birth mother. She’d been doing that a lot of late, sizing her mother up, challenging Delennia, her gaze hot and hawkish.

  Delennia stared her daughter down. It wasn’t a mean gaze, simply tough. Until at last Dherran saw Khenria wilt under her birth mother’s stare. The woman was formidable, and Khenria fidgeted in her saddle.

  “I march,” Delennia spoke firmly, “because having a tyrant-king for a neighbor is not healthy. If he can do this,” she gestured to the road, cobbles smeared with filth as rotting flesh was hauled away, “to his own people, then what will he do to mine? To ours, my da
ughter. And when a king is a tyrant, no matter how convincing his wyrria, eventually he will lose his people’s support. And that is where we win – by picking them up when he lets them fall. By providing help until they rise up and rip out the throat of the master who whips them like a broken cur.”

  The road was finally clear. The captain and the rest of Delennia’s soldiers returned to the moon-shadowed line, having cut the putrid ends of their ropes and left them to lie with the corpses now seething a bloated odor from either ditch. But Delennia held the line, not motioning them forward yet, staring her daughter down beneath the cold silver of the moon. Impressing upon her daughter, the Vhiniti and heir to the throne, a lesson.

  “Tell me you understand,” Delennia spoke quietly to her daughter.

  “I understand,” Khenria murmured upon the cool wind, though she bristled.

  “I do not expect you to call me mother,” Delennia spoke, low enough for only Khenria, “but like your father Arlen, I do expect you to absorb what we know. To prepare to someday lead in our stead, Khenria. If I die tonight, what does that mean for you? Think on it, and decide what it is you would do, should Lhaurent win this battle. If I should fall, or your father, and all the protectorates you hold dear.”

  Khenria was silent a long moment, absorbing her mother’s words. The column shifted behind her, eager to get going, but waiting for their lead. At last, Khenria spoke again, her brows knit. “Do you think you will die tonight?”

  “It matters not to me,” Delennia’s gaze pierced Khenria like a lioness’ claws. “But it matters to you, because you have let others hold you up. The time for that is past. Now you hold yourself up. Enter your own becoming, before we continue a step further. Because if you know who you are, when everyone else falls down around you – you will stand tall. You will fight for what you believe in. And that is the only way to triumph.”