Goldenmark

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  “Define things and wanting,” Theroun growled, hands on his longknives as his careful gaze scoured those who watched him.

  Khorel turned dark eyes to Theroun, quicksilver warning pummeling from him. “Death, if you are found too dangerous to let live. Or worse.”

  “How much worse?” Theroun growled.

  “Far worse. Come. And try to keep a leash on your darkness.” With that, Jornath strode forward through the throng, Kreth-Hakir and others sighing back from his presence like wheat before the scythe.

  CHAPTER 39 – JHERRICK

  Aldris had spent a number of days recovering from his ordeals of resurrection. The Albrenni had been caring for him, and the Guardsman had regained his health well. Now, the Kingsman and the Khehemnas stood face-to-face upon the cloverleaf plaza with the seven crystal archways, listening to the portals whisper in the violet dusk, flowing with the deep breath of the Void. Standing before Jherrick, Aldris set his hands to his hips, far more sober than he’d once been. A dusk breeze stirred his bright mane above his careworn smile, his black crystal death-sword in a harness upon his back with two matching longknives at his belt. Clad in his royal green silk jerkin tooled with silver thread, Aldris looked regal, hardened, his short golden beard luminous in the settling dark.

  “You look good, kid,” Aldris spoke at last.

  “You look better than I might have thought,” Jherrick returned with a slight smile.

  “I look better than I feel.” Aldris gave a low chuckle, his smile wry. “Death, you know? Takes its toll.”

  “What do you remember?” Jherrick had not been permitted to see Aldris while the Guardsman recovered, and he and Aldris still had not spoken of what had happened during Aldris’ resurrection. Commanded to sit and listen to the World Shaper’s song for the past week once more, Jherrick hadn’t been sure if the Albrenni were punishing him for his inability to finish Aldris’ resurrection, or if they’d simply had their hands full healing Archaeon Stranik. But now, watching the Guardsman returned, hale and whole, Jherrick knew he’d made the right decision, to bring the man back. Staring at each other, something flowed between them, some understanding that there was more they both had yet to do in this world.

  “I remember enough.” Aldris’ gaze slid past Jherrick’s shoulder to the seven archways, and Jherrick watched tendrils of lion-tawny light ease toward that otherworldly flow in the Void. “I remember music, and... love. No woman in the world can love a man like that, kid, I tell you that much.”

  “Do you want to go back?”

  Aldris drew a deep breath as his piercing green gaze flicked back to Jherrick. “No. I have a duty here. Just because we’ve come through to some mysterious realm ruled by ancient beings doesn’t mean we’re not needed back home. We took oaths to be in the Roushenn Palace Guard, kid. Oaths to Queen and country. I stand by them.”

  “I don’t know if I do anymore.” The evening breeze rippled Jherrick’s hair and he combed it back out of his eyes, longer than it had once been.

  “Maybe not.” Aldris’ smile was wry as he took in every inch of Jherrick’s frame. “You’ve changed, kid. Queen and country don’t seem to be your thing anymore. Maybe they never were. So. You can resurrect people, huh?”

  Aldris’ gaze was frank, searching. Jherrick knew the question in the Guardsman’s mind and he shivered. “I almost lost control of it, Aldris, trying to bring you back. I don’t know... if I can bring her back.”

  “But you might be able to.” Aldris’ gaze pierced Jherrick to the quick, intense as he moved a step closer in the falling dusk with a gesture at the cosmos brightening all around them now. “Lhaurent’s out there, Jherrick. Back home. Reaping Aeon-knows what destruction in our absence. The Albrenni have seen war surrounding Alrou-Mendera. He needs to be stopped.” Aldris scuffed a boot upon the stone. “Our world needs a hero, Jherrick. We need Olea.”

  “But what if I can’t—?” Jherrick’s heart clenched, fear gripping him.

  Aldris moved forward. Reaching out, he gripped Jherrick’s shoulder and Jherrick winced, the talon-punctures from Aldris’ resurrection still resisting Noldra Ethirae’s healing. “The Albrenni told me about the power you unleashed to bring me back. They told me they’ve only seen anything like it once before – in a time of real warriors, Jherrick, men and women with wyrric powers the likes of which we can only dream. Even if you lost control of it resurrecting me, you’re a power to be reckoned with. I know it. Halsos, I felt it. I can still feel those talons of yours dragging me back from wherever I was. There was a part of me that didn’t want to return. But you dragged my ass back, because I have a duty here, unfinished. And so do you.”

  Aldris’ emerald gaze was sharp. Jherrick felt a dire energy flow between them, as if the bond he’d hauled Aldris back from the Void by had never truly severed. “You want me to go with you. To return to Alrou-Mendera.”

  “The Albrenni say we can leave by those anytime.” Aldris nodded at the shimmering archways. “That they’ll take us where we need to go.”

  “Need is a funny thing.”

  “Yeah, no shit.” Aldris growled with a darker humor than Jherrick had ever heard from the man. Releasing Jherrick, he stepped up to the grand arches and scuffed one boot upon the stone, marveling up at their immense height. “Ever wonder if our need was what fucked us? Right from that damn Alranstone out of Lintesh?”

  “The Albrenni say that the souls bound inside Alranstones hear the music of the World Shaper,” Jherrick stared up at the shifting portalways also. “They go mad, unable to return to that vast music. They make choices based upon what they hear, a choice subtler than thought.”

  Aldris gave a harsh laugh, then curried a hand through his golden mane. “We’re gonna end up three galaxies over, if we take one of these damn things again. That Flavian fellow said this realm was carved out eons before his people were even born – that this is a space between time. Fuck if I know what that means, but apparently, passing a span here means nothing – we can go back to when we left, if we need to. Unless a portal-keeper stops us, I guess.”

  “These portals don’t have keepers, not like Alranstones,” Jherrick mused, feeling etheric currents move through the Voidworld. “These arches are open ways, Aldris. They operate on resonance – our own soul chooses the destination.”

  “Then it should be easy-peasy,” Aldris chuckled, his green eyes dark by the light of the shifting archways. “My soul wants to get the fuck home. And kick Lhaurent’s ass. You with me?”

  “You know it’s not that easy.”

  “Yeah. I really fucking do.” Aldris turned, giving Jherrick a hard stare like chips of burning flint. “You recovered from that Bloodstone near Khehem. I was dead, Jherrick. I was out there a long time. And even though it was only a month, it felt like centuries. A part of me can’t help but wonder... if I went through one of those,” Aldris nodded at the archways, “whether I would come back at all.”

  “Do you want to return to the Void?” Jherrick’s breath was soft. “Or would you rather return home?”

  Aldris’ gaze strayed far for a while, fixed upon the archways, then at last came back. He was silent for a moment more, then gave a wry chuckle. He was about to respond, when Jherrick suddenly felt a ripple pass through the Void. Like an exhalation, a tremendous wind sighed over him. The stars and galaxies stood out in high relief above, as if a dark moon had covered the night.

  Turning, Jherrick watched the archways shift and shiver in the Void. Suddenly, the centermost arch flashed, swirling fierce and chaotic. An explosion of heat knocked Jherrick and Aldris backward as the pillars of that arch writhed with luminous fire. Gold and red twisted in a vicious dance, as the World Shaper’s music screamed like a beast writhing in the grip of seven burning hells.

  A man was spat out from the centermost arch, landing with a wretched crunch upon the plaza’s stone – unmoving. Jherrick was already racing to his side, Aldris upon his heels. Decimated, the man’s flesh was gouged with talon-rips, as if an eag
le the size of a bear had tried to tear him apart. Blood was already soaking the agate-stone plaza, pulsing from a dozen rents in the man’s abdomen, his neck, his thigh. His shredded charcoal silk garb was of the Twelve Tribes’ berounhim caravanserai, but as his hood fell back, Jherrick saw russet-red hair like a man of Cennetia.

  As Jherrick’s hands touched the man to roll him to his back, his eyes flew open. Gold-red and twisting with wildfire, his eyes burned in his bloodshot whites. Unseeing, those eyes were dazed with pain and a terrible battle-fury. Searing like suns, the image of a red-gold dragon flamed up around the man in the Void. He roared with all the power of that massive beast behind it – and then his breath was gone.

  “Fuck!” Aldris felt for a pulse at the man’s ripped neck, more mincemeat than flesh, blood flowing out over his fingers. “Do something, Aeon-dammit! Use your gift!”

  Jherrick’s hands were already moving with the flow of his wyrria; his mind was already in the Void. Jherrick felt the man’s soul swirling around his body upon wings of gilded red flame, roaring for a way back in but not finding the means. This soul wanted to come back. It needed to. Surging around Jherrick in the Void, it blistered him with power and the agonizing need to have its body again. Moving on pure instinct, it was not a conscious decision Jherrick made, to bring the man back. It was as if Jherrick’s wyrria was compelled, his left hand slapping to the man’s heart, pressing to his rent chest as his right hand raised, his wyrria reaching out, up – everywhere.

  And as Jherrick acted, the man’s soul understood implicitly what was about to happen – roaring into Jherrick with the exultation of suns exploding.

  Jherrick screamed at the immense power heaving through him. Muscled with scales and burning flesh, it was chaos, a churning miasma of conflict and power. Using his body as a lightning rod, all that bestial energy roared inside Jherrick. His insides burned as his mind sundered trying to contain the man’s essence. It poured through him like lava as it slammed back into the man’s body. The man beneath Jherrick’s palm raged to life, roaring like his wyrria. With both hands, he seized Jherrick’s face – and a desperate hurl of memories went flipping through Jherrick’s mind.

  Destruction and death. War, terror, horror. Vast fields of blood, creatures of nightmare pouring out of open portalways, decimating armies like phosphor matchsticks. Upheavals of the land. Explosions of wyrria from deep within the earth, blasting cities to ruin. Everything he had seen in Noldra Ethirae’s memories of the Demon’s First Rise – to the last image and detail. But this remembrance was of modern vistas flooded with carnage and nightmare. In the man’s vision, Jherrick recognized the Aphellian Way, the Valley of Doors upon the Elsthemi border, the oases of Ghellen and Khehem – and the City of Lintesh.

  And through it all, cold red eyes, glorifying in the destruction to come.

  “Utrus!” The dying man croaked. “Khehe ahlwe—!”

  Shock smote Jherrick, to hear the man’s heavily-accented Old Khehemni. But his meaning was all too clear. The Utrus. Battle it. With his final pronouncement, the man’s umber-gold eyes rolled up. He seized, his broken body unable to contain his soul’s return. Blood poured from his mouth, a gurgling bloody froth.

  “Hemna ahlmine!” Jherrick shouted. “Stay with me, dammit!”

  Jherrick couldn’t let him die. This man was a power to be reckoned with – one who had seen the Demon’s Rise, not in elder times but in the modern era. The man’s golden-flame gaze tried to hold Jherrick’s, an animal determination within him. Before his soul could flee again, Jherrick raised both hands to the cosmos. With a primal roar, he did the only thing that came to him. He made his body a channel, a through-way – a portal in and of itself, through which the vast energy of the World Shaper could flow.

  And it came. Thundering through him with the sound of a thousand trumpets, roaring down through his hands and in the crown of his head with the power of a million drums. Ripping through every pore like the scrape of endless bow-strings, the vast creationary music of the cosmos came into Jherrick like a maelstrom wind through the harmonies of time. Unskilled, unlearned, Jherrick was drowning in the sound, tuned too far, being pulled down with it – all his body’s vibrations rushing into the dying man upon the bloody agate-stone.

  The man’s body took that harmony without apology or remorse. Like a thousand beasts opened their maws and drank that enormous sound, it ravaged Jherrick, devouring him alive. Jherrick screamed, desperately trying to get out of the way. But the red dragon ate his resonance, merciless. All heat left him. Jherrick’s blood slowed to a thick syrup, even as some part of him saw the man’s ruined body snapping back together. Wounds roared shut; bones hammered into place. Sinews stretched, thrumming as they knit, and the dying man arched in a spasm.

  But as his living gasp poured forth, shaking the tremolos of time, Jherrick’s own breath sighed out. Jherrick collapsed to the bloody stones, his own life exchanged for the man’s – even as some part of his dimming vision saw the man rise, hale and whole.

  “No! You are not to perish!”

  The man’s baritone was urgent, his speech a heavily-accented Common tongue now, flavored with the rolling lilt of the Twelve Tribes. Burning gold eyes were visible above Jherrick as scalding hands held his face – and then, the man’s lips were upon Jherrick’s.

  A tremendous beast of wyrria emanated from the man, power boiling through the Void. Like a storm in the darkness, it crackled with crimson fire and bursts of golden wyrric lightning. As the man exhaled, a raging fire of ether poured into Jherrick’s mouth. Cascading down Jherrick’s throat, it flamed his heart and lungs. Jherrick gasped, life flooding back as the man poured fire like liquid honey deep into his body, reviving that which had been ready to die. Jherrick gasped, watching the man’s wyrria manifest – terrible and magnificent, an immense power channeled directly into his veins and blood. After the third breath, Jherrick shuddered back completely, stabilized by that enormous flow.

  The man set their foreheads together, gripping Jherrick’s nape like they were brothers as he gave a breathless laugh. “You return, my savior! Thank all the gods!”

  Jherrick blinked up, seeing fire-gold eyes roiling with ancient power set in the man’s strong, handsome face. As his wyrria settled in the Void, the man’s eyes shifted from writhing fire into a pleasant gold-ochre color, reminding Jherrick quite suddenly of First-Lieutenant Fenton den’Kharel. His features were handsome, high-cheeked and chisel-jawed, with humor and kindness. He even looked like Fenton, as if they could have been brothers – one the essence of midday heat, the other evening’s last gloaming, his body wiry and lean and of a similar stature, though slightly taller.

  “Who are you?” Jherrick breathed, still feeling a nimbus of prickling energy all around him, as if the man couldn’t quite control his vast wyrria. A thousand ants stung Jherrick’s skin, marching along his pores, making him wince.

  The man chuckled, and with a knowing look, he shook out his body, hale now and without a scratch on him, though his charcoal berounhim-style silken garb was ripped to shit and soaked with blood. Doing a deep series of breaths, the pricking energy around the man gradually subsided as Jherrick sat up on the plaza, staring at him. Aldris knelt at Jherrick’s side, his eyes wide as their gazes connected, Aldris’ hand ready upon one longknife as he looked back to the stranger.

  “You ok, kid?” Aldris growled low, his vicious green gaze locked upon the russet-haired man.

  “I’m fine.” Jherrick reached out, settling his fingers to Aldris’ wrist. “I’m fine.”

  The Guardsman didn’t quite stand down as he helped Jherrick to his feet, his eyes never leaving the russet-haired man doing his breathing practice. At last, the man opened his eyes and with a fluid movement, rose, the prickling nimbus that had previously surrounded him smoothed out into an easy golden glow. Through his torn berounhim garb showed lithe, desert-honed muscles just like Lourden and his Rishaaleth. Lean as a sword, he looked no more than twenty-eight or thirty, hardly older th
an Jherrick – but held the command of a battle-lord as his eyes flashed crimson flame.

  “Forgive me,” he smiled wryly at Jherrick, with a nod to Aldris, “the dragons of our blood dance together, my friend. Thank you for restoring your liege, Khehemnas. Whatever the Scion of Khehem may do for you, he will.”

  “Scion of Khehem? Who are you? What the hell is this?” Aldris cut in, his eyes narrowed, his hand back on the knife at his hip.

  The man set his hands on his hips with an exhilarated laugh. Bright like a lion yet smooth like a wolf stalking dark shadows, he lifted one hand in a gesture of peacemaking. “Forgiveness! Please. I have come straight out of a dire trial, and my wits and manners scatter. It is not a daily occurrence that a man finds himself nearly torn apart and then just as suddenly corralled back into life. Forgiveness, please. My name is Leith Alodwine, Scion of Khehem, son of King Orihout Alodwine, of the Thirteen Tribes. And you are?”

  “Leith Alodwine? Last King of Khehem?” Aldris’ hand pulled his longknife now, both of them, as he moved into a fighting stance in front of Jherrick. “Hold right there, fuckstone! I don’t know who you are, but that isn’t Aeon-fucking funny.”

  Jherrick was as shocked as Aldris, but menacing the man at blade-point had been a bad move. “Careful, fighter.” The man’s eyes flashed crimson fire, his smooth baritone devoid of all pleasantness now, that strange nimbus prickling with energy around him once more. “Those who pull blades on the Scions of Khehem live short lives. Especially upon Khehem’s soon-to-be King.”

  “You really think you’re Khehem’s last King?” Aldris’ snort was derisive, his blades still out. “That city’s dead. No one’s lived there for a thousand years. Good luck getting crowned by anything other than char and sand.”