Goldenmark

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  “Behold,” Lhaurent murmured, using the knuckles of his spectral hand to stroke Theroun’s face, to touch the blood upon Theroun’s lips. “Destiny runs through my veins, Theroun den’Vekir. Would you continue to fight such a destiny?”

  Lhaurent gripped the back of Theroun’s head with his right hand, as his spectral one tasted Theroun’s blood. Theroun found himself struck mute by that touch – horrified and riveted all at once. Waves of power flooded from Lhaurent, pummeling Theroun, unimaginable. Cold and warm, Lhaurent’s spectral flesh pulled him like a siren song; commanding him not just to obey, but to love. To adore – and to worship Lhaurent like the god he was. Overwhelmed, Theroun found himself wanting to be closer. His hands had slipped to Lhaurent’s neck, drawing the man in. As if Theroun wanted to become one, in the fullest sense of the word.

  Stand firm, Scorpion.

  Khorel’s voice inside Theroun’s mind was like a hand upon his shoulder, pulling him back from a terrible abyss. As if a quicksilver lifeline had been cast to Theroun in a maelstrom, he seized that thread as Lhaurent’s power stormed him. And in that moment, Theroun found his Beast, and understood it. Lifting his hand, Theroun settled his grip behind Lhaurent’s neck, sealing them together.

  “So be it,” he growled.

  And then he thrust the power of his wyrria like a serpent’s strike through that drop of blood Lhaurent touched – hard. Making the man feel it. Forcing it to shiver up inside that swirling hand of power and death; making Lhaurent understand the madness that was the Black Viper of the Aphellian Way. All of Theroun’s rage; all his fury. All of his blackhearted existence inside this twisted body. All his lust for killing, his desire to murder unimpeded. Theroun let his venom flow through his blood, pouring out of his body like an oilslick darkness and into Lhaurent.

  Lhaurent stared at him in wide-eyed surprise, then flowed to his feet quickly, shaky, releasing Theroun so fast he was almost shoved over backwards. Staring down upon Theroun, he breathed hard, uncertainty in his oceanic grey gaze. His brows knit, his spectral hand and the inky darkness around the golden sigils swirling in a chaotic maelstrom, as if whatever he had felt from Theroun had rattled him.

  “Kill him,” Lhaurent spoke at last, “when our war is won. As far as our campaign, you will march out at dawn. Your previous request for more naval support is denied – you have all the ships you need for this engagement. Report when you arrive at the Aphellian Way. ”

  “Rennkavi. As you bid.” Khorel rose from the chaise with steady grace. Stepping behind Theroun, Khorel touched his shoulder. “Come.”

  Theroun came to his feet, not unsteady anymore but immensely calm, flooded with the searing black poison of his wyrria. They turned and Lhaurent watched them go, and were soon out the bluestone door into the hall. The door sealed with a sigh. Once it was shut, Khorel gave a sigh of his own. Theroun followed as they made their way back through the vaulted byrunstone halls, and Khorel led them back to the dome-room with the chugging gears before he finally spoke.

  “You did well,” he murmured, quietly. “Come. We still have much to do tonight.”

  “What happened in there?” Theroun followed as Khorel descended into the pit along the bluestone walkway.

  “You subsumed the Rennkavi’s Unity. By the power of your own wyrria.” Khorel glanced over at Theroun, his gaze frank.

  “I thought the Rennkavi was infallible.” Theroun growled, still feeling his dark wyrria moving inside him, unwilling to be completely put away yet.

  “He should be.” Khorel gave Theroun a level stare as they stepped up before the Alranstone.

  “Something is wrong with him, with the Goldenmarks. When I first met Lhaurent our Rennkavi, I expected a man of such overwhelming will and heart that his power would shine brighter than a thousand suns, the twinned blood of the Dawn and the Wolf and Dragon surging through his veins. But when Lhaurent unveiled his Goldenmarks to me at Highsummer... I was able to turn them from my heart, just as you did now. He still does not know that he did not command me to his service completely. And through me, the rest of the Kreth-Hakir have not been entirely commanded to the Rennkavi’s service, either.”

  “But you’re telling me they should have been. So Lhaurent’s power isn’t all-consuming, as your Order expected?” Theroun growled as they mounted the wide dais, the towering Alranstone ahead.

  “It’s enough to be vastly dangerous.” Khorel shot Theroun a warning glance. “Even if he can’t completely compel you or me, or the entirety of the Kreth-Hakir nor this Alranstone in the bowels of Roushenn, he can Unify armies of common folk, legions of them. And he still wields peculiar powers of his own, amplified a hundredfold by Leith’s ring and other wyrric talismans that Lhaurent has learned to use. And that is something to gravely beware.”

  Theroun glanced at the Stone as it gave a pulse of light from an opal eye at the top of six closed ones. “Is that how Lhaurent attains passage through these things – he Unifies them to his will, just like he does with men?”

  “Not all of them.” Khorel stroked the Stone lovingly. “This one is still able to resist him, though she plays along with his schemes.”

  “She?” Theroun cocked his head. “Are you saying a person is inside every Alranstone?”

  “Yes. Just as Lhaurent poisons the hearts of men into worshiping him, he can poison the hearts of Alranstones into doing his will. It’s part of why his campaigns were able to spread so far and so quickly, in secret. But this one closest to him is not poisoned. Metrene only makes him think she’s a slave, so she can watch where he goes. And report – to us.”

  “She’s Kreth-Hakir.” Theroun’s eyebrows rose. He set a palm to the Stone and felt an enormous weave of opal strands smooth as pearls settle over his thoughts, soothing.

  “Metrene den’Yesh, consort to our High Master, and the strongest Kreth-Hakir High Mistress who ever lived. She’s been inside this Stone since Leith committed her here, a thousand years ago.”

  A smooth surge came from the Kingstone again, but there was no more time for talk as a blinding flare of light seared the cavern, and Theroun was once again threaded through annihilation and back out the other side. They emerged at the Stone in Ligenia, and Jornath wasted no time recovering. With long strides, he led Theroun down another set of cliff-steps, winding them far down into the harbor, to the slurry of floating piers that formed the oceanic trade of Ligenia Bay.

  They continued along the quiet docks in a tense silence. Few people were about this time of night. A trio of old duffers smoking pipes gambled at cards across a barrel by the light of an unsteady lantern. A ship’s dog barked, growling at Khorel as they passed. Khorel gave it a sharp glance and it yelped, cowering behind a stack of crab-pots and whining as if struck. A waifish whore in salt-starched rags showed Theroun a shoulder and an unenthusiastic smile as they moved by, blisters encrusting her lips. Theroun hadn’t allowed sick whores in his army camps, and Jornath was no different – she was down here working the docks because she couldn’t get coin on the cliffs above.

  Theroun walked on, moving briskly to keep up with the powerful strides of Khorel Jornath. The man was brooding, though on everything that had happened with Lhaurent or on something else, Theroun couldn’t say. Curious, Theroun brushed up against Khorel’s mind, his control over his oilslick mind-weaves better in the vast quiet of the bay. Only to find Khorel’s thoughts vacant as graves. The man was hiding his mind from Theroun, very carefully, though his emotions were all too plain upon his body.

  Theroun didn’t know where they were going next, as they wound their way through the docks to the far western edge of the squalid city. Squat stone buildings populated the wharf, fisheries and salting operations, trade-houses and gambling inns. Cracked wooden placards creaked in the autumnal wind, paint flaking and crusty from sea-spray. A circle of unsavory characters occupied the dock ahead. Though they numbered eight swarthy men, they took one look at Khorel and Theroun coming down the dock and broke apart, stepping back, wariness shining in
their eyes. Not the looks of men whose minds had been cowed, but of wolves who naturally feared a predator in the dark stronger than they.

  Khorel and Theroun strode by without a second glance. At last, they reached a sea-cave on the western side of the bay. It was high and dry, the tide washed out to its lowest point. Khorel rounded into the darkness and Theroun followed, letting his eyes adjust to the deep interior. Gazing around, Theroun saw that a short Alranstone occupied the vaulted sea-cave. High up in a cluster of volcanic rock, it thrust up from a vein of smoky Hellenthine crystal. Streaked with yellow quartz that gleamed gold in the lantern light like a tiger’s eyes, the striped crystal Alranstone stood only a handspan taller than Theroun.

  Up on the volcanic bedrock, three Kreth-Hakir Brethren gave cordial nods to Khorel, standing from where they had been sitting in silent meditation next to the lantern. Brother Kiiar was there with his flyaway white hair and enthusiastic smile through his half-melted face. Brother Caldrian gave Theroun a welcoming scowl with an amused quirk of lips, and Theroun gave one back. Rising with impeccable fluidity, Brother Aldo curried back his copper waves and gave Khorel a nod, saluting with two fingers to his inner eye.

  “Brother Jornath. All is in readiness for the Heraldation.”

  “Thank you, Brother Aldo. Brother Caldrian, my Scion’s accoutrement.”

  Stepping forward, Brother Caldrian held out a bundled harness of black leather, complete with longknives and a longsword. “You might need these tonight.”

  Raising his eyebrows, but seizing the weapons-harness anyway, Theroun buckled on twin longknives at his hips, settling the sword over his shoulder, also noting that a number of fly-blades were sheathed up the harness on his chest. There were also two longknives for his boots, and as Theroun slid them home, it felt right, returning to his battle-self. Though he didn’t question why he’d suddenly been gifted weapons – Jornath’s tense attitude tonight said enough. As Theroun prepared, Khorel leaped up the steps in the bedrock, waiting up by the Alranstone with hooded eyes. Theroun ascended the flights quickly with the other Brethren, soon standing before the tiger-striped Stone in the damp cave.

  Jornath gave Theroun a warning look. “If Lhaurent is deadly, our next meeting is doubly so. Keep your mouth shut and your ears open, Scion. Do not worry, I will guard anything within your mind that needs guarding, but I implore you to be as cautious as you have ever been, as the night moves forward. Are we clear?”

  “Indeed.” Theroun responded, wondering what was coming. But he had no more time as everyone set their palms to the Alranstone, and were flashed through – into the most enormous cavern Theroun had ever seen.

  It didn’t smell like ocean detritus anymore, but cool and old, like they were buried leagues beneath the earth. A hollow breeze sighed through a space so gargantuan that Theroun couldn’t see its boundaries, licking Theroun’s skin. Faraway, light from deep inside the monstrous cavern showed edged contours in the black, of upthrust glassy obsidian crags nearby. As Theroun followed Jornath and the rest of his Brethren down an obsidian staircase from the high vantage they’d come through, he glanced back to see they’d been spat out of a massive Alranstone of pure obsidian ten man-heights tall. It had no eyes and no markings, and neither did the tremendous flow of black glass they now traversed.

  Rounding upthrust pillars of obsidian as they descended, the entirety of the cavern was suddenly exposed to Theroun’s view, and it was far larger than Theroun had initially thought. Of a vastness that boggled the mind, Theroun found himself humbled by the power of nature. As if he gazed down upon the Lintesh from the slopes of the Kingsmount, he saw a vast chasm of darkness below, ringing a tremendous plaza of natural obsidian that had thrust up from an oblivion of nothingness all around it, floating in the cavernous black.

  Like fireflies in the night, the plaza below sparkled with light, and activity. A host was gathering, perhaps some five hundred strong, in the center of thirteen enormous obsidian archways that formed a ring in the center of the natural glass. As Theroun watched, enormous copper braziers were lit between every obsidian arch, blazing a hearty light through the darkness in a vast ring. Men moved about inside that ring, most clad in black. The glassy black lava-floe was connected to the far reaches of the cavern by arching obsidian bridges that spanned the ring of nothingness at the plaza’s rim.

  Following Jornath down the winding stairs carven into the near wall, Theroun and the rest were silent as they finally arrived at one of those ancient glass bridges. Narrow and without rails over the nothingness below, the bridge had an arching slickness that made even a hardy warrior like Theroun get a thump of trepidation in his chest. He tried not to stare down into that nothing, but he found he couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. Endless it was, down into the bowels of the earth. One wrongly-placed foot would send Theroun sliding across the obsidian and down into it, his screams forever lost.

  He pushed it from his mind, taking a deep breath and fixing his gaze straight ahead to the plaza. They were soon across the bridge, and Theroun breathed internally in relief. Before him, he could see the gathering at the center of the thirteen arches. Most of those here were clad in the studded silver and black leather of the Kreth-Hakir, though some weren’t. As they neared one gargantuan arch, Theroun picked out the crimson of a Red Valor uniform moving in that sea of black, though the man who wore it was a slender copper-haired Cennetian. Silver flashes of Lefkani privateer’s garb caught his gaze, their coins of wealth smelted into their salt-wrecked sea-armor. A few swarthy Ghreccani moved in that casual melee, scimitars at their colorful sashes and tattooed geometric designs of their kills across their cheeks, foreheads, and down their necks. A smattering of Unaligned men of massive stature towered above the rest, clad in herringbone huntsman’s fawn leathers.

  But the thing that truly caught Theroun’s attention was the dragon.

  Astonishment hit him as he stared. This creature, if indeed it was what Theroun supposed it was, though he had thought such things only the stuff of fae-yarns, had been dead a very long time. Large as a hundred men and coiled in a fetal position in the center of the plaza, it was surrounded on all sides by massive upthrust jags of obsidian. It looked mummified; scaled skin thin as vellum stretched over jutting bones, its color perhaps once a brilliant red with golden stripes along its length, but which now looked like a lord’s finery gone to ruin.

  An opalescent dust coated the beast, making it appear bleached of its once-luminous color, though that dust shimmered in the darkness like powdered diamonds. Sinew could be seen all along the length of its rib-sunken body and vertebrae, where spines jutted out in a long double-row upon its back. Its enormous head was blocky, its thick jaws snarling with black fangs. The scaled skin had sunk over hollowed eye-sockets and filled with dust, giving the thing a haunting, pale stare. A mantle folded along its neck, furled in death but comprised of a vicious spread of spines. Its muscled forelegs had massive claws, but it had no hind-legs that Theroun could see, nor wings. Only a body and tail that coiled like a serpent, the spiked tip curling back around its forelegs and snout in death.

  Staring at the dead beast, Theroun realized they had crossed under the obsidian arch. The gathering turned to watch their arrival, except for a few servers moving through the throng with refreshment upon silver trays, dressed in Kreth-Hakir garb with their cowls up. Upthrust areas of obsidian had been commandeered as high seats for whatever was about to occur, providing a view over the plaza. The area within the archways descended at a slope to the upthrust obsidian platform and the mummified dragon in the center, like a giant amphitheater.

  Theroun could feel thunder moving around that bowl. As if the obsidian floes amplified all thought, mind-weaves hit Theroun like an ocean as he crossed under the arch behind Khorel Jornath. Theroun staggered, feeling like his head would explode from the sudden roar of it. And yet, the gargantuan chamber was silent, only the sounds those of breathing and the clink of drinks set aside as Theroun crossed into the assembly’s midst –
curious eyes staring and minds pressing from all around.

  With a snarl, Theroun felt his oilslick-black wyrria rise, spearing minds back from his person with a renegade rabidity. A number of eyes went wide, and the thunder of minds hissed upon the perimeter as if Theroun had bitten them. A passing serving-lad collapsed in a faint, shattering the crystal chalices upon his tray and spilling blood-red wine over the plaza’s black glass at Theroun’s boots. Three others hustled to the lad, hauling him up and out of the circle toward far passages in the cavern, staring back at Theroun with wondering eyes.

  Everything inside Theroun told him he’d just entered a den of thieves, as his wyrria bristled. These were men of the most vile and dubious sort. Cons, thieves, murderers; night-workers, wet-boys, pirates. Manipulators who wove in the shadows and turned kingdoms to their liking. His spine tingled with danger, and Theroun found his hands upon his knife-hilts.

  But some of those nearest Theroun in Hakir black gave him thoughtful looks as they glanced to Khorel, then back to Theroun. One ancient man in a plain black robe rather than studded leathers gave a small smile, his black-on-black eyes piercing from beneath his cowl, and Theroun saw Brother Kiiar nod. A group of Lefkani pirates in their smelted silver coin armor and fetish-strung mohawks approached, and Brother Caldrian clasped arms with them. Like a cool wind, Theroun felt Khorel’s mind move through his – calming him, pressing his unease back, assuring him there was no immediate danger, yet.

  “Steady, Scion,” Khorel murmured at his side. “Be still and stay silent until I introduce you before the Heraldation. Keep a civil tongue. And know that there are those here who can read your mind flawlessly – and compel you to do things just as flawlessly if you are found wanting as a new member among our Order.”