Goldenmark

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  “Arlen fears General Merra will go after her people. On her own.” Eleshen finished, horror filling her violet eyes.

  “And that she’ll take her keshari riders with her,” Ihbram nodded. “Severely diminishing the strength of our forces.”

  “But it’s suicide!” Eleshen retorted hotly.

  “Don’t we all know it.” Ihbram glanced to the Elsthemi High General. Khouren watched the woman with her great cat. Its ears flicked their way, its whiskers riffled. It opened one big golden eye and stared Khouren down. With a deep breath, Merra opened her eyes. As she did, her cat snuffled the wind, mouth open. Suddenly, Merra slung up into the saddle and wrenched her polearm from the ground, her cat on its feet. They moved off, up and over the hill.

  “Shit!” Surging forward, Ihbram was fast on their heels over the low rise toward the impromptu cat-cradle. Foreboding in his gut, Khouren jogged in pursuit, Eleshen on his heels. As they crested the rise, he saw General Merra reign her cat close to her Captains, the hulking brothers Rhone and Rhennon Uhlki, issuing low commands. Ihbram dashed down the hill, barreling toward the cats. Hauling out his sword, Ihbram thundered, “Halt!” – raising every head and making the cats yowl.

  “Draw no steel unless ye plan ta use it!” General Merra barked at Ihbram. Khouren held his ground with a hand on his weapons, watching the scene. Eleshen was no less cautious, sliding her longknives out with slow stealth as she and Khouren stood on the flank of the hill. Tension simmered through the air, as Arlen, Delennia, and their contingent crested the rise, stopping to watch what was happening below.

  “I won’t let you leave.” Ihbram’s stern words to General Merra wafted upon the wind. He shifted his warrior’s stance, stepping in front of Merra’s great white cat. “You’ll die if you go. And you’ll take the strongest part of our forces with you.”

  “They’re my Elsthemi! Enslaved!” General Merra’s blue eyes blazed.

  “They’re still alive.” Ihbram’s gaze was somber, his voice calm. “Your Elsthemi have been biding their time. It’s not pretty, but if you go now, you’ll all die. Then where will Elsthemen be?”

  “My people need me ta rescue them!” Merra’s gaze was fierce, her visage a thundercloud.

  “Your people need you to stay alive.” Ihbram had dropped his voice, but Khouren had sharp ears. “The Menderian forces will annihilate you. If you had twenty thousand maybe you’d have a chance. But against what Lhaurent’s got? Even I can think of no plan to rescue slaves against that.”

  Merra gazed down at Ihbram. Khouren could see the brightness of tears in her fierce blue eyes. As he watched, Ihbram slid away his sword, stepping close to the big cat, lifting a hand to smooth its rippling fur. Wyrria prickled through the air, a pressure Khouren could feel up on the grassy knoll. In his mind-sight, he watched soothing flows of crimson ease out from Ihbram into the Elsthemi High General.

  “Don’t throw your life away,” Ihbram murmured. “There is a time for motion and a time for stillness. And a time to regroup with your allies – who are here. And who need you.”

  Merra choked. She gazed down into Ihbram’s solemn face and Khouren saw tears fall. “Where do I have allies anymore? Where will Elsthemen go if our warriors die?”

  “To Valenghia.” Delennia Oblitenne strode down the grassy hillside, Arlen in her wake. The new Vhinesse was impressive in her crimson and black chevron battle-armor, broad-shouldered and strong in her ground-eating stride as she came to pause a short distance away. “Where we will fight with strength and get all our lands and peoples back from this abominable tyrant.”

  “We need you, High General.” Stepping up next to Merra, Ihbram laid a hand upon Merra’s boot. Khouren saw clever threads of crimson mind-wyrria easing up her calf, seeping into her thigh. Merra bristled like a mongoose facing off with a snake, then kicked out at Ihbram’s hand as if she could sense what was happening.

  “Take yer mitts off me.”

  Khouren’s ears perked at that, and he heard Eleshen catch her breath.

  “We need you, High General,” Ihbram echoed again, his strength of persona easing into Merra again on ruby tendrils. Ihbram’s flows were potent, but Merra broke her palm from her saddle-horn with a brisk movement, slapping wyrric threads out of the way as if she had felt them. Ihbram’s eyes flashed in the lowering sunlight; Merra gave a low, simmering growl. Khouren’s gut twisted at that sound, watching their standoff of wills.

  “Why won’t she see reason?” He breathed softly.

  “Warriors have passionate hearts,” Eleshen spoke, her gaze rapt upon the scene.

  “We need you, Merra. Please. Don’t throw your life away.” Ihbram repeated it a third time, tension simmering through the air upon his crimson threads.

  And suddenly, the Elsthemi High General broke. With a crushing sob, she threw her polearm down to the grass and fell forward over the neck of her great cat, burying her face in its fur. Even from a distance, Khouren could feel the thrumming of the keshar-cat’s rolling purr as it turned its blocky head, licking Merra’s red-blonde braids; comforting her. Their bond was tender, and something about it hitched Khouren’s chest. His heart swelled and he reached out to collect Eleshen close. She wound her arms about his waist as they both watched.

  Down below, Ihbram had claimed the reins of Merra’s cat, petting it soothingly. Khouren watched Delennia and Arlen move in, Delennia speaking low to both Ihbram and Merra. Merra rose, palming away tears as she nodded to Delennia’s words, then glanced at Arlen, who nodded also.

  And Khouren knew that Ihbram had convinced them. They were headed to Valenghia, and it would be through the barrows as Ihbram willed. As Merra roared for her keshari to mount up, the sharp five-blast of her horn echoed through the grasslands. Within a quarter-hour, Khouren was mounted up behind Eleshen upon her big dappled cat, their allied army being led by Ihbram as they wound through the rolling hills of barrow-mounds. Eleshen guided her cat around sharp rocks as their army swarmed the low hills. At the top of one sandy rise, Khouren saw they moved toward a particularly large mass of ancient bones piled atop a cairn.

  Built of shale-rocks and obsidian flint, the enormous barrow Ihbram led them toward was roughly constructed. Forming a ring of doorways below, the barrow dug into a hill of sod topped by a massive pile of petrified bones. But every doorway in the lower part of the structure led nowhere. Bricked up with sharp pieces of flat shale, each doorway was capped with a long spike of obsidian – entrances closed up long ago. The sun lowered, expanding over the golden hills, lighting the cairn with a fiery luminescence. Khouren watched obsidian glint like vicious, knowing eye-slits, as if those spikes belonged to some ancient reptile. A chill swept him as Eleshen’s cat stepped over a boundary of scattered obsidian that might once have been a wall. He felt some massive darkness stalk him, aware of his presence.

  Others felt it, too. A number of Valormen made a superstitious warding with two fingers drawn in a line over their brow. Horses reared and snorted, keshar-cats snarled and hissed, backs arched and ears flat to their skulls. It took a lot of shouts and slapping of reins to get the cats to continue forward. The column halted, leaving only the commanders and Ihbram riding forward to investigate the cairn. Khouren watched as Ihbram stalked his cat past a few doors, listening at each one as if waiting to hear something.

  “Is Ihbram sure about this?” Eleshen shivered before Khouren, as if sensing the danger Khouren felt in this place.

  “This is where Ihbram and I came through long ago,” Khouren spoke tersely, the feeling of being watched eating at him. “From a lost city in the northern Bog near the Valenghian fortifications on the Way. Ihbram believes we can get through again, without trekking for days. Make it in time to help the Valenghian forces, before Lhaurent’s army arrives.”

  “Do you think we can get through?” Eleshen asked, snuggling back into Khouren’s arms.

  “I don’t even think we should be here,” Khouren breathed, fear rippling through his sinews. Ihbram had stopped his cat be
fore one shale doorway. The cat gave a low yowl, twitching its whiskers at the door. Ihbram gestured and Merra gave a sharp whistle for the other commanders in the lowering darkness. Then, Ihbram ambled his cat toward the bricked-up doorway – and disappeared.

  Khouren blinked. One moment, his uncle and his cat had been there, while the next, they had shivered like a mirage upon a scorching plain, gone from sight. But presently they returned, slipping back through the solid doorway, Ihbram beckoning. Arlen and Delennia moved their steeds forward, and Eleshen clicked her tongue to move her dappled cat also. Khouren watched as Ihbram returned to the door, slipping through like smoke again, followed by General Merra and her big white beast. Khouren’s brows knit, as he and Eleshen gained the spot where Merra and Ihbram had disappeared.

  In the shivering light of evening, Khouren suddenly saw a great truth. Though all the other doors into the barrow had been blocked-up, this one was a cleverly-disguised mirage of wyrria. From a distance, the doorway looked solid, but now that Khouren was close, he saw the image of solidity was created by a crystal set into the obsidian spike, catching the last of the sun’s rays and creating an illusion that confounded the mind. Even as Khouren stared at it, his mind still couldn’t tell it wasn’t a solid wall, except that he could actually perceive the dark shadows inside the barrow. As he stuck a hand into the arch, it met nothing; no stone, no obsidian. Just a mild sensation of chill – as he watched his own hand shimmer and disappear.

  “Get your asses in here!” Ihbram’s voice called out from inside the barrow. Khouren could just make him out in the gloom beyond the mirage. Moving their cat forward beneath the arch, Eleshen guided them through a blowing sensation of cold into the dim interior.

  Circular, the space had a packed dirt floor, shadows devouring the inside. All along the curved walls, Khouren saw human skulls staring back at him. Thousands of them, carefully stacked and interspersed with arrangements of femurs and longbones. The entire cairn seemed to watch him, with a haunting stillness that made every hair on his body stand up. Not to mention the black pool that waited in the middle of the floor. Dismounting, Khouren walked up to where Arlen and Delennia crouched, hovering their fingertips over the pool next to Ihbram and Merra. Eleshen was quick to his side as Khouren gained the rim of the pool, crouching.

  This was the same place, just as he remembered it from hundreds of years ago. He stared down into black, far down as if through another universe. Ancient, an abandoned city grew up thick and rancid from a devouring bog on the other side of the black gateway. A city of tumbled ruins covered by vines and overgrowth with a sloping amphitheater in a mud-choked hollow. Khouren stared, as Eleshen breathed softly by his side. He could almost feel the slow evening in that other place, filtering down from a high canopy of trailing vines and spreading foliage.

  “Where is that?” Eleshen spoke, her voice hushed in the dim cairn.

  “It’s known as Wayfarer,” Khouren breathed. “A city of ancient peoples long gone. It’s just north of the Aphellian Way, on the Valenghian side.”

  “This is the portal Khouren and I came through before,” Ihbram spoke solidly, glancing up at the others, though his gaze fixed upon Khouren.

  “How do you know it still works?” General Merra breathed, stretching out her fingertips but not quite daring to touch that viscous black surface.

  “I don’t,” Ihbram’s smile was wry, “but it’s worth a shot. Everyone step back. This might take some convincing.”

  Stepping forward in the dim space as everyone else took a few steps back, Khouren knew his duty. With a deep breath, he focused on the pool as he gained Ihbram’s side. Though Khouren quailed, a glint in Ihbram’s sharp emerald eyes said he was ready to do battle.

  And battle it would be – Khouren knew all too well.

  With the lightest touch, Ihbram stretched his fingertips down from his crouch, slowly, until they met the inky surface. Instantly, something seized him. Ihbram went rigid, his eyes rolling up in his head. He began to shiver in a palsy, his eyelids fluttering, his eyes rolled so far back they were only whites. As Ihbram shuddered, breathing hard, Khouren could see what was siphoning out of his uncle. Tendrils of crimson were being sucked out of Ihbram and into the pool – hundreds of them, the thing trapped within the portal drinking the man’s wyrric lifeblood alive.

  Ihbram spasmed and cried out, and Khouren responded. Seizing his uncle’s shoulder with one hand, he thrust his other hand into the inky blackness. Pain gripped him. A sensation like the pool was alive, though it had no mind. And within that sensation, he felt a thousand gaping maws suddenly open, eager.

  One meal of wyrria wasn’t enough – it would have more before it allowed passage.

  Khouren screamed as he felt crimson and gold floes of Wolf and Dragon wyrria sucked out of his very bones. Every eye of those skulls watched him from the walls, laughing with madness. And he knew, that each and every one of them had been devoured by this thing over the eons. All of their wyrria drained – to death.

  Khouren screamed again, pulled so hard that his supportive hand fell from Ihbram’s shoulder, splashing into the blackness. Ihbram was dragged forward, stumbling into the viscous black liquid as the pool’s pull increased a hundredfold. Eating, devouring, draining them. Sucking the life from their flesh and the magic from their veins. It hadn’t had a good meal in ages, and it was far more ravenous. Khouren felt himself desiccating, aging fast, becoming brittle – becoming death as it ate. The toll had to be paid for them to pass, but in this terrible devouring – so much worse than it had been before – Khouren knew they had made a vast mistake.

  Eleshen’s scream was faraway. He barely registered her, vaulting from her cat and striding into the black pool. With a scream like a harpy, she thrust both hands deep into the pool. It roared in exultation, eager to devour whatever additional wyrria she held.

  But suddenly, Khouren felt something compress through the pool. Like Eleshen had slapped it, he felt the tides turn. As she roared at it like a warrior gone amok, Eleshen raised one black hand to the bones surrounding the cairn. Fixing them in her violet eyes as Khouren shuddered with the last of his life, she roared.

  He felt her take control. It was then that Khouren understood her strange wyrria as she shuddered hard, draining the creature right back. She hadn’t battled the creature, her wyrria simply echoed its own – taking on its qualities, its motions and desires. She was suddenly the ravenous devouring of a starlit ocean inside Khouren’s mind. Violet consumed his vision as Eleshen drained wyrria back from the creature’s talismans – from the bones that supported its vast magic. Filling her to the brim, pouring it back into Khouren and Ihbram.

  Khouren gasped as his wyrria returned. Seething through his sinews and flesh like hot lightning, it burned him as it returned, but its flood was welcome. With Eleshen growling like a demon, Khouren and Ihbram were able to stand, wading into the center of the pool. Standing with her, seizing hands, they combined their might.

  Eleshen’s wyrria gained their qualities – Ihbram’s adept convincing and Khouren’s smoky inability to be grasped. With a roar, she slipped all three of them away from the creature’s hunger by Khouren’s magic. She trapped it inside her mind, by Ihbram’s ability. The thing howled, a terrible cacophony of a thousand beasts being tortured, struggling. I don’t think so. Eleshen’s mind breathed through all of them, surging with violet light. You will allow us passage. And exact no more toll, from any that pass through this place.

  Like a beaten thing, its power flashed away. All those seeping, draining maws were just gone, to the bright wrath of Eleshen’s nature. Khouren heaved a breath and shuddered to stillness, returning from his far trance as the pool cleared. From an inky darkness it surged out in a bright wave, the surface rippling to a crystalline white. The city in the bog looked like a paradise now upon the other side, and Khouren could practically hear the calling of birds as they fluttered through the verdant trees. Glancing at Ihbram, he saw his uncle’s eyes were open. His russet b
raids were streaked with white, two prominent streaks in his red beard, his skin creased with lines. The man had aged years in moments, and Khouren gaped, astounded.

  But even as he stared, Eleshen turned, setting a palm to Ihbram’s heart. Her eyes glowed with violet light as she poured the last of his wyrria back into him, brightening his hair back to a fiery russet and smoothing lines until he looked barely forty once more.

  “Eleshen—!” Ihbram gasped. With a shiver, Eleshen seemed to dispel the trance that consumed her, and the power in her eyes flashed out – back to a normal, though lovely, color. Blinking around, her gaze fixed upon the skulls for a moment, then upon Khouren.

  “We can take the army through now,” she spoke shakily. “It’ll give everyone passage.” Stepping up to support the still-unsteady Ihbram, she got under his arm and helped Khouren move them all out of the crystalline pool. Delennia, Arlen, and the rest of the commanders gaped from the boundary, eyes darting as if unsure what had just happened. Arlen stepped up, setting a hand to Ihbram’s shoulder, his iron-hard gaze vastly concerned.

  “Are you all right, my friend?”

  “I’ll be fine.” Ihbram’s lips quirked, though Khouren could tell he was faking it. Khouren’s uncle was still in pain, even if he played strong. Eleshen had reversed the wyrria used on them by the thing that lived in the pool, but it wasn’t the kind of sacrifice a man recovered from. Even though flesh could heal and wyrria be returned, that feeling of being helpless never went away.

  Arlen said nothing, only nodded. Glancing at the pool, he narrowed his eyes. And without further hesitation, strode in.

  CHAPTER 44 – DHERRAN

  Dherran gaped as Arlen disappeared in an instant, into the crystalline pool within the dim barrow. There was nothing for a long moment, only ripples in the viscous water, until suddenly he was back, striding out of the pool with only his boots wet.

  “It works,” Arlen growled at Delennia. “Muster the army.”