Blackmark (The Kingsmen Chronicles #1): An Epic Fantasy Adventure

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  Olea nodded. “Yes. Fenton said he looked through the rosters and found no Guardsmen declared missing from palace duties the day the Kingskinder were collected. But what he did find, was that a shipment of three hundred cobalt jerkins ordered from the leatherworks at Sulphhaven were reported missing two weeks prior to the Summons. Stolen right before delivery.”

  “So the Guardsmen involved in the capture of the Kingskinder could have been hired mercenaries. They had carts and horses with them, too, right? I’m seeing Lhaurent in a few minutes to plan supplies for the merchant fleet venture to Ghrec, before our meeting with the Chancellate tonight. I'll ask him if anything was reported missing from the palace stables prior to the Kingsmen disappearance. And then we'll know if anyone from Roushenn was involved.”

  “Careful, Alden. We don't know whom to trust.”

  “We took a chance with Fenton and Aldris. They seem alright. And Lhaurent has been an institution at this palace since my father was born. Don't worry, Olea. It's just a few questions about supplies. I'll say I'm just doing a retrospective inventory on the stables.”

  “Careful.”

  Alden strode forward, seizing Olea around the waist and pressing her with a hard kiss right out in the open where anyone could have seen. Fortunately, the practice yards were empty, and a hasty glance showed no one at the windows of the palace overlooking the yards.

  Olea glowered as Alden pulled away, chuckling.

  “I'll be careful!” He strode out of the sand ring, a haughty jaunt in his step as he slid his practice sword back into the rack. “Oh, and by the way... you’re coming with me as my escort out on the trading-run to Ghrec when it leaves in two days with the merchant fleet. Get your things packed. We'll have all the time in the world to trade blows and heave while we sample spices in hot climes a few days hence!” Alden gave her a cheeky wink. “See you in the Chancellate Hall for the meeting at sixth bell.”

  And turned his back, striding away through the dust.

  But the memory broke suddenly as Olea heard another pair of feet coming to her cell. This time, it was the swish of soft boots down a stone staircase. She peered curiously out of her cell, saw the guard salute. And then the tall, stooped figure of Lhaurent den’Karthus approached, his regular pearl-grey outfit switched for a very fine doublet and breeches of silver-embroidered dark blue silk. His chain of office was at the collar of his doublet, and he clasped his hands behind his back as he came to stand before her bars. Olea stood, dragging her boots through the sigils from the clockwork she had been tracing in the dirt, discreetly obliterating them.

  “Captain-General.”

  “Castellan.” Olea matched his frigid tone, and did him one better.

  He gave a slight smirk. “You might be a little politer, captain. I am here on your behalf.”

  “Oh?” Olea was saccharine. “Did the Dhenra send you to return me to my duties?”

  His smirk was benignly apologetic. “No, I’m afraid. Nothing so bold. The Dhenra merely inquires about your health.”

  “As well as can be expected for the Captain-General of the Guard who is caged up and prevented from protecting her liege in a den of butchers and mongrels.”

  “You think so little of her suitors?” Lhaurent raised a well-groomed eyebrow. “No one’s good enough for your little Dhenra?”

  “Not within these walls.”

  “Do you think Roushenn so unfit a place for Elyasin?”

  “Roushenn is unfit for anyone but you.”

  “Ah, I see…” Lhaurent clasped his oily hands before him now, looking down and twiddling his thumbs, deliberately. “Roushenn is unfit for anyone, you are right, but me. I am a very good fit for palace life, it is true.”

  “How did you kill all the Kingsmen when they came here after the Summons, Lhaurent? How did you make the palace walls move?”

  Lhaurent chuckled smoothly. “What a vivid imagination you have, my dear captain!”

  “I know you were a part of it, Lhaurent. I have a survivor, a witness.”

  His grey gaze went cold suddenly. “That can be amended.”

  “What are you after? The throne? The kingdom? Why kill the Alrashemni?”

  His grey eyes glittered in the darkness, and a slight smile played about his smooth lips. “Such paltry treasures to be heaped upon these unwilling shoulders. No... When I look in the mirror, captain, I see… possibility. A world behind the world. A world that can be what we make of it, through subtle grace. Like sunlight underwater. What do you see when you look in the mirror, captain? Power? Influence? A position to the right of the throne?”

  Olea was at the bars now, seething, rabid. “I see your face, you bastard, watching me!”

  His eyebrows rose with mock affront. “Do you think me so callous, my dear captain, to watch what a woman does with her off-hours? To observe whom she does or does not take to bed? I do not peek through keyholes.”

  “No, but you watch behind the mirrors.” Olea growled, low and menacing.

  Lhaurent’s smile was an oily smirk from where he stood, so carefully out of reach. “And I watch from behind your bars, captain. For the palace is a prison to you. And to me, it is freedom. Ultimate freedom.”

  “You bastard.” Olea’s breath was hot, her face inches from the bars, her knuckles white where she gripped cold iron. If she could have, she would have ripped his smirking mouth off his face with her teeth.

  “It was you all along, wasn’t it?” Olea seethed. “When you exposed Alden and I that day before the entire Chancellate! I thought it was a maid or a chamberlain who had seen us kiss in the practice yards! I thought we had been careless, that that one slip had been seen, but it was you! You were watching behind the walls of my bedchamber, you disgusting piece of filth! From behind that fucking gilded mirror you never removed from my quarters!!”

  “Temper, captain.” Lhaurent lifted one finger, tapping his smooth lips to partially conceal his oily smirk. “You should be more careful whom you threaten. It might not go well for you. As it did not go so well for Alden. Or even Uhlas, for that matter.”

  Lhaurent den’Karthus removed his finger from his lips, but his smirk remained. He had turned to leave, but Olea's next words stopped him. “You killed Alden. And Uhlas.”

  He turned slightly, a serene smile upon his smooth lips. “Alden was rash. He was bound to get killed sooner or later.”

  “You bribed someone to put out the lighthouse at Amlenport. You orchestrated it! Just like you orchestrated the theft of emeralds from our trade ships! Because you knew Uhlas would put me right back at Alden's side once he returned from Ghrec, and you couldn't take that chance! You couldn't get to Alden while I was around.”

  Lhaurent examined his buffed nails. “Rumor and conjecture, my dear. Amlenport is a very busy city of trade. There are a thousand thieves who would bribe a lighthouse-keeper to make a beacon go dark there.”

  “All so that Alden and I would never get the chance to expose where the threads we were following went. The threads that led right to you!”

  Lhaurent's eyes went very hard. “Follow the tail of the hydra, my dear, and you'll find more than you bargained for.”

  “There may be more heads than you, but you're the true snake in the grass.”

  “Thank you, my dear captain. That was very nice of you to say.”

  Olea blinked, astounded. “So you admit it? You killed Alden? And Uhlas?”

  “Ahh... Uhlas. So paranoid at the end. Almost as if someone were watching him day and night, don't you think?” Lhaurent's lips lifted at the corners.

  “He knew you were behind the walls.”

  “Uhlas knew nothing. Uhlas knew what I told him to know, and what I told him was to drink his medicine so his health would recover. Which he did. And for a few hours after every vial he felt tremendously improved.”

  “Before he felt even worse and had to have another vial. You poisoned him, you bastard...!”

  “I urged an ailing, paranoid liege to take his medicines for th
e good of his kingdom, and for his daughter. His only remaining heir.”

  Olea surged at the bars. “What are you plotting against Elyasin?!”

  Lhaurent lifted one well-combed eyebrow. “Elyasin will enjoy being Queen. For as long as she may.” He turned to go, his gossamer step sliding away over the stones.

  “I will expose you for the crimes you’ve committed!” Olea screamed behind him. “I will find the missing link of it all, figure out how you orchestrated so many deaths! I will prove what you've done! And I will expose this palace for what it is, Lhaurent!”

  Lhaurent den'Karthus turned back, his grey eyes feverish with mirth. “And who is going to believe you? Some things are far too much for the ordinary mind. What would happen if the tired, superstitious masses knew the secrets kings keep? What riots would they incite? What tumult would they create? Foolish people do foolish things with precious information. The Alrashemni knew it. But they have kept far too many secrets, for far too long. And secrets have a way of strangling those who wield them.”

  “I’m going to strangle you with yours, Lhaurent.” Olea growled through her bars.

  His glittering grey gaze was feral now, and a sneer curled his lips. “Not if I strangle you with yours first. I seem to recall you have two interesting tomes in your quarters, which you peruse at very late hours. Very interesting little books. Treason interesting, some might say, to assert that the Queen herself comes from the Alrashemni lineage of the damned and traitorous Kingsmen. Now I wonder… would the people of Lintesh enjoy having a Kingswoman traitor who is also a witch to burn upon their pyre for harvest-fest?”

  “I’m no witch!”

  He eyed her, smirking. “With hearing like you have? It seems a witch-talent to me, that you can even come close to hearing me when I enter a room. Or perhaps we could use those two little volumes... to prove that you wanted to steal the throne by seducing the Dhenir. Oh yes. Because you are of a bloodline more royal than our precious Dhenir and Dhenra! That might give the populace a nice little reason to flay you. But first thing's first. I have a coronation to attend in a few days. The spectacle of which I am very much looking forward to. Goodnight, captain.”

  Lhaurent swished away over the stones and out of sight beyond the ring of torchlight. Olea growled, throwing her weight upon the bars, desperate in her imprisonment. Her heart hammered, her mind frozen into a loop in her terror at everything Lhaurent had wrought, at everything was going to. The content of the two tomes rolled through her mind. Lists of names and dates, descriptions of the first kings and queens of Alrou-Mendera. How they had come to power and fashioned a nation. And what race of people they had come from, the Linea den’Alrahel of the Alrashemni.

  Olea’s knees buckled. She sat down hard upon her pallet. She stared at the wall opposite, her mind churning, desperate and utterly trapped behind bars in the flickering darkness. The creeping sensation of being watched filled her, lifting the hairs at the nape of her neck. She drew her knees in to her chest, her limbs locked tight with an animal panic.

  CHAPTER 32 – THEROUN

  The Dhenra had decided, officially. The coronation was to be quite an event, with a wedding celebration immediately afterward. A wedding to House Alramir of Elsthemen. Theroun stood, gazing down upon documents drawn up to his specifications in a fine, flowing hand. The King’s Calligrapher had done a magnificent job with the Writ of Betrothal, and now it bore both signatures of the Dhenra and of King Therel Alramir. Witnessed by Theroun and the other six Chancellors, the betrothal was official. The Writ of Marriage, still empty of signatures, sat next to it upon Theroun’s stout desk.

  Though it was blistering in his quarters in the late-afternoon heat, Theroun wanted to light the hearth and cast both documents into the fire. He wanted to burn them and stuff Lhaurent’s oily mouth with the ashes before he ran the man through. Swirling wine in his silver goblet as he stood by the desk, Theroun sighed. His ghosts crowded him despite the brightness of the afternoon, accusing him with staring eyes. Twisting nightmares cascaded across his vision.

  One image held him, of an entire village slaughtered, pigs feasting upon the dead along with the flies and crows. Theroun looked into the red dregs of his wine and saw Thelkomen's Crossing, his own handiwork. The first village he had slaughtered in his madness upon the Aphellian Way. It had been a Menderian village. Uhlas' own people that he had killed in his madness. He found he couldn’t let the image go, not today. Dead children run through by spearmen, their wounds red as his wine, corpses bloating in the summer heat. Goodwives burned alive in their homes when the dry thatch was torched and the doors barricaded. Slashes across guts so that the men would die slow in their own shit and piss.

  All by Theroun’s command. All because the entire village bore the Blackmark of the Alrashemni. Every last man, woman, and child.

  He sighed again, his usual glower replaced by a hard-lined woe. Theroun had showed no remorse at the time. So maddened by grief and fever from his assassin-wounds and so hopped up on fennewith for the pain, he didn’t even recall half his orders. He had been a devil upon the Aphellian Way. And the Khehemni had been fast to conscript him, upon witnessing what he was capable of. Regret had not come until after he had joined them. His hatred for Alrashemni Kingsmen had simmered long after his madness ceased. But he did feel remorse, now, looking at these documents, at Elyasin’s signed death-note.

  Theroun stared into his wine, watching bodies bleed.

  He’d been ruthless, stringing up both Menderian and Valenghian Alrashemni to every monolith lining the Aphellian Way, shirts ripped from their torsos be they man or woman, displaying the Mountain and Stars. Up they went, dead and alive alike, the live ones left to rot for the crows or strangle to death. They had continued thus, down the Aphellian Way, to the next village, then the next. Theroun’s madness had spread like a curse. His own men went mad, became brutal. Theroun hadn’t cared in his vengeful, deviling fever if those who bore the Inkings were raped or tortured before they died, maimed, or torn apart for the sport of his cruelest curs. Dead Alrashemni had lined the Aphellian Way for fifty leagues into Valenghia before King Uhlas had gotten word of it and sent General Ghuryen to stop Theroun.

  It should have been Theroun’s death. He had been carted back to Roushenn in manacles, feverish and rabid, still unable to walk or ride, hardly able to breathe. Uhlas had been livid, had ordered him to the deepest cells. But it had been Castellan Lhaurent and Chancellor Evshein who had convinced the King to send his physician instead. That Theroun was still valuable. To give him a second chance. Crimes of war were committed in every nation, and Theroun’s formidable ability to manage armies had value.

  And so Theroun had remained in Roushenn. In a suite of rooms rather than a cell, visited by the King’s Physician, out of the public eye. Rumor had been efficiently suppressed, his armies disbanded and re-conscripted into other regiments. Tales of horror along the Aphellian Way had been cleverly downplayed in the populace. It was then that the Lothren of the Khehemni had made themselves known through Lhaurent and Evshein, how it was they who had whispered in Uhlas’ ear to spare Theroun’s life.

  And only then had they made known their true purpose. It had been aligned with Theroun’s own purpose at the time. He had been promised his position of influence as a Chancellor, to be an agent close to the crown. So he could help secure the annihilation of Alrashemni in every nation.

  But not to end the King’s line. Not to slaughter Uhlas’ daughter, his only living heir, and start a war that will kill countless thousands of innocents and loyal subjects.

  “Black Viper of the Aphellian Way,” Theroun murmured, his gaze fixed upon the last sanguine pool of his red wine. He swirled it in his goblet, feeling sweat slide down his neck in the heat of the day. Slowly, his gaze swung back to the two Writs upon his desk. Theroun lifted his goblet and drained it, tasting blood with every swallow. Carefully, he set it aside, so no wine was near the white parchment. Lifting the two documents, he opened a drawer of his desk, sli
d them in, locked it. Theroun rifled a hand through his hair, airing it. His apartments were stifling. This week had been drowned in a heavy, muggy fever, a thunderstorm pushing this heat that still wouldn’t break.

  A walk was what he needed. To clear this heat, these thoughts of blood. Theroun turned to the door, let himself out, locked it behind him. Striding down the hall, he turned down a spiral staircase, heading to the lower Tiers, egressing through a servant’s door and into the Rose Courtyard. Walking slowly with his side stitching from the war in his soul, Theroun took the air, stopping to smell this bloom or that upon their spreading trellises. A military man raised by a father who had been a captain, Theroun had grown up hard and been denied the finer things in life. But his mother had always kept a small rose garden, and it had been his vice. Roses and Generals didn’t mix, but as a Chancellor now, no one thought it odd for him to stroll and to think, to bend and deeply inhale a flower.

  He had been evading Lhaurent all morning, and Chancellor Evshein. Theroun wanted to be alone, to mourn. It wasn’t everyday that a woman he thought of nearly as a daughter had chosen to go to her death. Elyasin was a pretty bird, one who was going to die in her cage, spiked by its bars. King Therel Alramir was going to be arrested for the actions of his First Sword. And then he would be hung.

  And then they would have a war. Another one.

  Theroun sighed, his customary scowl more morose than usual, bending to smell yet another flower. Its scent was pure as dreams, but to him it smelled of battlefield scorch, its heady fragrance the sweetness of rotting corpses. He paced to the next bloom, stopping to inhale that one too, as if the next flower, or the next, could remove the taste of char, blood, and bile upon his tongue.