“I do believe I saw her in your bed once, Elohl.” Fenton spoke with an amused quirk of lips, as they watched her receive a codex from Arlen, containing the Writ of her Eighth Seal. Stepping in, Arlen set his palm upon her chest, over her stark Elsthemi-style Inkings. He murmured words for her, and Elohl watched those stunning violet eyes shine with tears. But the woman was fierce, and did not shed her tears as Arlen stepped back, lifting his blade and piercing her, just a small welt of blood, in the center of her Inking. She bore it well, flinching not at all, her eyes proud.
Arlen moved to the Vhiniti next, repeating the ceremony. But Khenria received a piercing from Arlen and then a beaming smile. Elohl recalled some gossip, that Delennia’s daughter and Dherran’s paramour was also Arlen’s daughter. Fatherly pride shone from the man’s flint-blue eyes as he pressed her forehead with a kiss. Elohl saw her exhale, before she looked her father in the eyes with fierce readiness. Arlen concluded the ceremony, and the hall erupted in victorious roars, the Valenghian Vhinesse ascending the dais to stand with her daughter.
“Is that really Eleshen?” Elohl watched the beautiful warrior descend the dais now that the ceremony was concluded. She accepted a cup of wine from a serving-lad, her eyes strangely sad as she scanned the hall, though other Kingsmen in their Greys moved by, congratulating her. Seeing Elohl standing with Fenton, her gaze fixed. She smiled and began slipping though the crowd with a dancer’s grace as Queen Elyasin bade everyone drink and make merry.
“That’s Eleshen, alright. Hard as it may be to believe.” Fenton tracked her approach. She was soon before them, stepping forward to set a hand to Fenton’s shoulder and give him a kiss upon his cheek, her bell-chime voice low and ringing with cheeky laughter.
“Fentleith, you tease!” Eleshen quipped. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
“Eleshen. Congratulations on your Dhepanship – and your Inking. It looks very well on you.” Fenton clinked goblets with her. “You remember Elohl.”
Elohl’s heart leapt to his throat as those stunning violet eyes pinned him. The woman crossed one arm over her abdomen and beneath her elbow, swirling her goblet as she gave Elohl a very arch gaze with one eyebrow quirked.
“Well! Never thought I’d see the Rennkavi again. After you abandoned me in that barn of an inn. I heard you saved a Queen or something? Or was it the world? Oh dear, how could you possibly have kept track of a tagalong innkeeper during all that? Good thing I learned how to use my fry-pan after all.”
“And a sword. And longknives. And wyrria.” Fenton chuckled into his wine, grinning.
“Eleshen!” Elohl couldn’t believe it. She was entirely different, and yet, it was her. Her fierce, teasing pout that grinned around the edges. The fire in those defiant eyes. The way she crossed her arm just so, to make sure he knew where her breasts were, and that her chest had a stark Blackmark upon it now. She was Eleshen, even though Elohl could barely reconcile her manner in this new warrior’s body.
“Hey, Kingswoman! Eleshen! Come here and get some congratulations!”
Elohl didn’t have a moment to speak before Ihbram strode up, his russet braids clean and oiled and his beard trimmed, looking dashing in a crimson and gold jerkin similar to Fenton’s and also tooled with the Wolf and Dragon. Wrapping Eleshen in a swaddling hug, he lifted her off the ground with a roaring laugh, and she shoved him off in a playful manner. It wasn’t sexual, but sibling-esque, and it punched Elohl in the heart. Eleshen puffed up her chest at Ihbram, who playfully put out a hand to touch her Inkings, before she slapped his fingers away with a feisty laugh.
“You’re such a bitch,” Ihbram chuckled, massaging his hand.
“And you’re a rogue!” Eleshen laughed. But her levity was arrested as she glanced at Elohl.
“Interrupt much, son of mine?” Fenton lifted a goblet from a server’s tray, handing it to Ihbram. “Elohl and Eleshen were just getting reacquainted.”
“Oh! Well. I think that pillar over there needs some judicious loitering.” Ihbram had the grace to look chagrined. Eleshen’s skin flushed, her gaze flicking away from Elohl’s. But as Ihbram made to withdraw, nudging Fenton to join him, Eleshen reached out and snagged Fenton by the elbow.
“Stay.”
Ihbram and Fenton exchanged a look. “We’ll be just over there, getting a bite,” Fenton nodded to a spot ten paces off, near a table laden with desserts and pies. Eleshen nodded, and Ihbram and his father moved off, though Ihbram and Fenton both gave a warning glance back to Elohl – a glance that spoke volumes.
Eleshen was fidgeting with her fingers when Elohl looked back. She was so different, but her mannerisms were the same. As he watched, she drew her long sable braid over her shoulder and began fiddling with the end of that instead. It made Elohl smile, and she looked up, meeting his gaze at last.
“I don’t know quite what to say,” she spoke plainly. “I’m so – so angry at you.”
“You have every right to be.” It hurt too much to say more, so Elohl lapsed into quiet.
Eleshen glanced over, and Elohl’s gaze followed. To see Ghrenna, lingering at her pillar, sipping and watching the crowd. She looked around, saw them watching, and looked away again.
“I thought—” Eleshen spoke again. “I thought you two would be together now.”
“So did I.” Elohl’s words were stone as they dropped from his lips.
“Perhaps some things aren’t meant to be.”
Elohl heard too much in Eleshen’s simple statement. He heard the deep knell of fate, like a resounding gong sounding a destiny he didn’t want. He heard a chorus of dark laughter, like the celestial Void mocking him. He heard his own heartbreak in those words, and something else, that tore him apart more than his own woe.
He heard the darkness inside Eleshen, something she’d only hinted at before.
“I thought I could love you.” Eleshen’s arm cradled herself tight, her fingertips gripping her goblet, white. “I thought we could have a simple future, together. Fighting the good fight for truth and justice. I didn’t even realize how naive I was until everything twisted. From right to wrong. From light to darkness. From known to... strange.” She took a deep breath, and Elohl waited. “I’d like to apologize to you, Elohl.”
“What do you mean?” Confusion flooded Elohl, feeling like he should have been the one apologizing. He stepped closer, feeling an urge to touch her, but she held up a quick hand.
“No. I need to get this out.” Taking a long breath, she started again. “I need to apologize for following you that day on the road. If I hadn’t, you would never have gone up to Gerrov-Tel. You’d never have been Goldenmarked. You’d never have been pulled around so cruelly by the weaves of fate. I see it in your eyes, how much you desire the steadiness of home and hearth. But I knew the moment you stepped up my porch-boards, that you were a man whose heart could never let him rest until he found the one that made him complete. I knew, but I pushed. I’m sorry. For both our sakes.”
All words dropped from Elohl’s lips. He stood staring at her, feeling too much. Feeling everything he had endured these past six months. Everything he had lost, all the ways life had uprooted him. And yet, staring down into Eleshen’s lovely face, he couldn’t blame her for that. Eleshen had been the instigator for him to take the path up to Hahled’s Alranstone, but if she’d not been there, who was to say he’d not have been called on his own. He didn’t know what expression was on his face, but something broke in Eleshen’s eyes as he stood there, silent.
Her gaze shying away, Eleshen stepped in and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Don’t hate me, Elohl. Please. I couldn’t bear it.”
Moving off to Fenton and Ihbram, she left Elohl standing alone by the pillar.
The party suddenly had no flavor left in it. Like a shadow, Elohl downed his drink and set it upon a server’s tray, then turned and threaded through the greenery to the rear of the hall. Slipping out, he turned a corner and moved down a secondary stairwell, lit only by torches guttering in ir
on sconces. He wasn’t even certain where his feet were taking him. Led by a tingle of his foot here, a brush of his leg there, he finally exited the palace through an ironbound side-door into a snowy midnight courtyard drowning with the scent of roses.
His wyrria chose the way, forming a ghostly picture of his surroundings of ferns and trees and gravel paths in the night. Some part of Elohl registered the familiarity of the garden, drowning in a midnight hush – the same side-door and garden he’d come through ten years ago when he’d first stolen into Roushenn on his dire errand. The specter of that time breathed around him in the night as he passed under archways and trellises, his feet crunching softly in the moonlit snow. Until he stopped, gazing down, and sank to his knees with his forehead resting upon Olea’s sarcophagus.
Entombed in an elegant coffin made of smooth clear quartz, Olea’s body was clad in Kingsmen Greys, her features restored to a timeless loveliness by the wyrria flowing through the crystal. But her beauty could not belie the pale cast of death in her features, nor the stiffness with which her fingers clasped the hilts of two Alrashemni longknives crossed atop her chest. Elohl’s shoulders heaved. His heart cracked. Misery came flooding out in a terrible wave, and soon he was down upon his hands and knees in the snow, screaming.
The courtyard was emptied; no one came for him. No hands touched his hair to comfort him. No lips found his cheek to kiss away his grief. No hearts wound through his, to warm him upon this darkest winter midnight.
Until they did. A gentle hand touched Elohl’s hair and he startled. Flashing to his feet with one hand upon his longknife, his heart pounded, his head wild like an animal. With steady eyes, Ghrenna stood her ground before him. Morvein Vishke – a wealth of heartache lining her lovely face.
“What do you want?” Elohl rasped, removing his hand from his blade with a will.
“She was your sister?” The white witch breathed, her gaze flicking to Olea’s beautiful tomb.
“She was more than that.” Elohl choked and turned away, staring at Olea’s loveliness rather than face the woman behind him.
“Twinned souls.” Morvein’s low alto breathed through the crystal night as she moved to his side. Reaching out, she stroked the tomb. “My Brother Kings were twins, too – twinned souls. Where one went, the other was sure to follow. Where one had passion, the other did also. Though they were so different – my light and my darkness.”
Elohl had nothing to say to that, and so said nothing.
“I miss them, you know,” she spoke again. “They were my own true loves, just as you believe me to be yours. But all things sunder to time. I cursed my beloveds to writhe in misery for eons inside their Alranstones. All so that I could bring you – the Rennkavi – to this world.”
Turning, she set a hand upon his arm, and Elohl couldn’t help but face her. Gazing up at him with an ancient pain in her cerulean eyes, she gave a sad smile. “I don’t remember our love, you and I. But something inside me knows it was there. It was bright, and it was good, and every sinew of my body feels it when I look at you. Though I don’t love you, you feel like home to me, and that means more than you could ever know. My home is gone – destroyed, so long ago. And the ones I loved are now gone with it. We have nothing left, you and I. Nothing left, but the decisions we now make with the time we still have.”
A small smile twitched her full lips, before it was gone. And seeing that smile, standing so close, Elohl suddenly felt his wretched heart cry out. Reaching out, he touched her snow-pale locks, cupping her face with his hand. Sliding a hand to her waist, he moved closer. Everything inside him felt her fire. Everything inside him knew her body, because it sang in tune with his. Everything inside him knew that she and he had been forever changed – the both of them dealt a hand of fate they could never escape. He felt all of her pain and glory, calling him just like her beauty had called him beneath the summer moon so long ago.
Pulling her close, Elohl lowered his lips, feeling their hearts resonate. Smelling her, clean and sweet like pines and wintermint beneath a tundra night. But she turned her head at the last moment. Breathing hard, she set her cheek to his instead. “Forgive me. My heart grieves for other men.”
With a twist so deft he hardly felt it, she was out of his arms. And Elohl was once again alone – more thoroughly than he’d been in his entire life.
His heart concussed in his chest. A raw pain gaped inside him, devouring. But no one was there to see his tears now. No one was looking at a man who had lost everything, who had been used by the world and spat out again with more scars ripping through his heart than he wore at his wrists. No one was looking at a man who had aged eons in months, the hard grey of his eyes ravaged now like the climb-weathered skin of his hands. Who bore the Goldenmarks of the Rennkavi with his Blackmark, but who still could not find peace, or a home.
Because home was gone, and could never be returned.
With a gasp that was too hard to be a sob and too soft to be a roar, Elohl turned. Passing a hand over Olea’s last rest, he stepped through the snowy courtyard and out a side-arch, into the deep midnight beyond.
* * *
“Thought I might find you down here.”
Fenton’s voice was smooth in the bitter darkness. Elohl leaned up against the wall of the bluestone cavern beside the massive ironwood doors of the Wolf and Dragon. He remembered this place as an alehouse, but it was different now. The space was open, no chairs and tables or racks of barrels, but full of crates as if it was used for storage. Roushenn’s swirling globes gathered near Elohl with a hushed midnight glow, and he moved a hand through the air, brushing at them idly.
“So you found me.” Elohl’s words sounded flat even to his own ears. Fenton moved into the muted light and watched Elohl a moment, his expression unreadable.
“Come with me. I have something to show you.”
“Where?” Elohl didn’t rise, just continued moving his hand through those limpid lights.
“Just up the stone bridge, there.”
Elohl glanced to where Fenton indicated – to the natural stone bridge that had once backed the wooden bar. The bar was gone, but the stairs carven in the stone up to the bridge’s crest were still there. As a breath of midnight wind eased through the cavern from the crevasse high above that led to the rooftops of Roushenn, Elohl regarded the high, narrow arch cutting through the center of the enormous cavern, lit by a collection of swirling orbs. It was graceful in the darkness, like a bridge to some unbeheld realm that might save Elohl from this roaring, cavernous rage he felt inside.
With a hard sigh, Elohl pushed to his feet. Fenton turned, leading the way across the polished bluestone floor to the stairs. They ascended into the cavernous darkness in silence, a cool breeze lipping Elohl from someplace far inside the Kingsmount. Gaining the height, they stepped onto the far end of the bridge, and Fenton gestured to the center of the arch.
“Go ahead.”
Knitting his brows, Elohl faced the vaulted arch. White globes swirled away from him as he moved forward upon the narrow stone spar, leaving the bridge in darkness. A hundred-fold stronger than it had ever been, Elohl’s sensate sphere pulsed him onward as he moved to the middle of the bridge. Breathing in the cool, massive space, he felt a strange calm come over him. A calm that went deep to his bones, easing his tension and heartache. Easing every sadness and fury his mortal soul carried and breathing it away into that vast black nothingness.
Halting at the center of the bridge, the sensation of emptiness and peace came to completion, and Elohl heaved a sigh. Tension dropped from his shoulders. And as Elohl stood there, gazing into the black, something began to glow. It wasn’t his Goldenmarks, but pricks of light in the darkness. As he watched, those pin-pricks strengthened, becoming tiny stars. A million burning lights surrounded Elohl in the dark, like diamonds scattered in the air, each twisting subtly with the same etheric flame that burned through his Goldenmarks.
Mesmerized, Elohl reached out a hand, causing one of the lights to flare
at his touch. A brief mirage blossomed in the darkness, of a ravine of red rocks inset with a vaulted doorway, and then the vision shuffled. The lights rearranged, zooming past each other, opening out from pinpricks until the area Elohl had touched filled the cavern and a new constellation filled the darkness.
“What is it?” Elohl asked, mesmerized.
“As near as I can tell,” Fenton moved up to stand at his side, “it’s a map.”
“Of the stars?”
“Not really.” Fenton shook his head. “This map doesn’t match any star-chart I’ve ever seen. I think it’s a map of portals. Not just through our continent, but through many worlds. Portals like the Alranstones and the Valley of Doors, but far more ancient.”
Reaching out, Fenton selected a different light. It flared blue-green and the image of an underwater temple blossomed, before the stars rearranged again. Zooming in more, they were sparser now, as if the map hadn’t been charted that far.
“Who made it?” Elohl breathed, his woe tempered in a moment of fascination.
“Who else would mark this cavern with the Wolf and Dragon?”
“Leith Alodwine.” Elohl glanced to Fenton, understanding. “He was charting portal-ways on our world?”
“Not just our world.” Fenton’s fingers selected another spot and an image flared of a jungle with foliage so fiercely red and orange that it smote Elohl’s eyes. He saw three suns – one red, one yellow, and one black – before the map rearranged again. “As many worlds as he could find.”
“How?” Elohl breathed.
“Even my grandfather’s mysteries are mysteries,” Fenton murmured, his voice holding wonder and awe. “Just when I thought I knew him from my mother’s tales, I hear something different. Too many people assert that he was a good man, trying to do a good thing, even if his power led him astray. The Giannyk Bhorlen told me to investigate what lies inside me, Elohl. A passion so raw and ruinous I’ve not known what to do with it or how to handle it for centuries. But being at your side, feeling this amazing wyrria my grandfather wrought and channeled into your body... some part of me doubts that he did what he did for selfish aims. And now, his power flows through me a hundred times stronger, ever since the ritual opened up wyrria upon our world again... I feel it, rushing through me in a tidal wave. And I wonder, how it was possible for Leith Alodwine to hold all that back. And I also wonder, how in a God’s age you’re managing it, after what I saw on the White Tower.”
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