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

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  Khouren had never mastered the sword, not like his grandfather. Knives were better for the darkest work of night, in close, confined spaces like Roushenn’s halls. But Khouren maintained a part of his mind upon his feet as he traversed the palace. He had to maintain something of his mind upon his feet when he walked upon anything but the earth itself. Or else he would fall through man-made structures entirely. It had happened. He’d broken his share of bones, and fortunately his long life also included mending quickly.

  But in these halls, Khouren was through anything in moments, silent as a ghost and often surprising servants and guards just as if he was one. From which the most amazing tails of Roushenn’s hauntings had sprouted.

  The Ghost of Roushenn. What a laugh.

  The House of Alodwine, the original Scions of Khehem, had always possessed the most peculiar gifts. Though sometimes slow to awaken, their wyrria of Werus et Khehem yielded formidable abilities. And alone among them, Khouren had somehow acquired his oddity, along with House Alodwine’s longevity. Oh, his bones were starting to protest as he snaked through the halls. Sometimes his knees would creak, and at times his fingers and joints would ache, especially if he indulged in ale or sweets. But the blessing of his ancient clan was this firmness of body and mind, for more years than perhaps they should have lingered.

  There weren’t many of them now, the Alodwine lineage having its own particular curse of the difficult bearing of children. But their longevity had made them suspicious, and so did the House of Alodwine live in the shadows. Some had sided with the Khehemni over the years, their original bloodline. Some had sided with the Alrashemni and beaten Khehemni back, opposing the atrocities now committed by a people who had forgotten their bloodlines.

  But most had simply declined to engage the ancient war.

  Because they alone remembered the truth.

  Khouren’s mother and her father, and all the lineage of Alodwine, kept secrets. The true tales of the Thirteen Tribes, of the Prophecy of the Golden Marks and the Rennkavi, and of the Great Union to Come. Of all the hope through these bitter years of warfare, waiting for the one who would unite them at last, who would undo the vast wrongs done long ago in Khehem.

  And forty years ago, when a lost palace page had accidentally stumbled himself into Khouren Alodwine’s domain, the wyrria within the lad strong enough to open a passage through the palace walls to the Hinterhaft, Khouren had seen. He had seen the Goldenmarks upon the boy’s flesh. And he had stepped from the shadows, and knelt before his true Rennkavi at last, the one who would Unite them all in glory.

  Now, his feet hummed to be doing the will of his Rennkavi. Tomorrow was to be a day of glory, Khouren thought as he stepped quickly through muted halls lit blue by orbs weaving high above like drunken moths. Tomorrow was the day his Rennkavi would take command, though he let the Khehemni Lothren believe they were still in charge, for now. Tomorrow was the day all worlds would tilt, all perceptions shift, all foundations be shaken.

  And his Rennkavi would step into that dearth of leadership, a phoenix to be crowned in glory, uniting all the peoples at last.

  Khouren stepped quickly through dark halls, slipping through another wall, into his Rennkavi’s private rooms. There upon the ornate desk was the item he’d been promised, just the same as ten years ago when the Alrashemni Kingsmen had come to Roushenn. A small glass vial, plain, it could have been clear water, or a tincture made of distilled white wine with medicinal herbs. But this wasn’t for healing. Khouren stepped quickly over the plush silk carpets to the fantastically carven desk, his fingers lifting the vial. Unbottling it, he wafted it beneath his nose. The faint smell of rotten citrus made his stomach churn. He stoppered it tightly, and slipped it into his leather belt pouch.

  Turning to the darkened fireplace, he found the second item. A large bronze censer hung there upon a chain. An unnotable item, used sometimes for burning healing incense when one was ill. He retrieved it from its iron hook, then hunkered at the yet-warm coals, brushing back ashes until he found some still glowing. Khouren twisted the censer open, raked in a few coals, then assembled it, holding it by a short length of chain so it wouldn’t swing. Turning, he stepped to the nearest wall and melted into it, back the way he’d come.

  Stepping briskly through the fey blue passages behind Roushenn’s walls, Khouren tried not to think about the price of blood that would be paid tomorrow at the coronation.

  Only about the glory of the Great Unification, come at last.

  His next stop was an errand for his grandfather. And partly for his Rennkavi. And partly for himself. Setting down the bronze censer in a dark section of Hinterhaft hallway, he slid through a wall into the deepest shadows within a barred cell, and came to stillness. Well out of the torch’s reach at the guard station of the Upper Cells, no light found him. But Khouren’s eyes were adjusted to the dark. His charge tonight was lit, crowned with the halo of the flames in their brackets behind her. Reclining upon her pallet near the bars, her black curls shone blue in the nimbus of the unsteady light. Her face was angelic, hard like queens of old with her striking cheekbones and sharp jaw, yet soft with that kissable mouth, her skin that somehow remained white despite all the time she spent out in the sun upon the Tiers.

  She slept. Khouren loved watching her sleep. Ever since his Rennkavi had bid him keep an eye upon her and report back, ten years ago when she arrived at the palace, he’d enjoyed his duty. Sometimes she would twist in her sheets and cry out, sweating with nightmares, and those times Khouren felt his heart riven for her, how she suffered. Sometimes she would surge, flushed and scraping away her blankets in the dead hours of the night, arching as she took her Dhenir in dreams. Khouren loved to watch those moments, to see how she rode her beloved, even now, two long years past his death. Sometimes he would place himself within the wall, only his eyes out to watch her, touching himself as she spasmed and cried out in a terrible bliss. Sometimes he’d done that when she’d actually been with her callous princeling, jealous and seething to watch her fucking another man.

  She was his. She wasn’t, but she was. No one could appreciate her like Khouren could. No one knew the pureness of her lineage, not so broken and fractured as that pretty sun-haired girl who now sat the throne, not for much longer. No, this creature before him was his true Queen. And now as he watched her sleep, her straight brows knit in a slight frown, a troubled look he’d seen her make many a night.

  Khouren had the urge, as he always did, to soothe her.

  Sliding forward in the darkness, keeping to the deepest shadows, he made no sound in the night. An impeccable silence was his, practiced over hundreds of years. His breath he could pause and his heart he could slow to his will, giving nothing of himself away to her formidable wyrric hearing as he moved closer. In her deepest sleep now, she breathed steady and slow, a pattern Khouren had mapped over the years. She would not wake, not unless something startled her. But the guard was drowsing at his station and the palace was silent in the deepest dark before the coronation day dawned, with a bloody sunrise as it soon would.

  Now was his time, and hers, to be together. His grandfather had bid him keep her safe, and it was not precisely against his Rennkavi’s orders, so safe was how Khouren would keep her. At last, he’d gained her side, next to her pallet bed. She hadn’t stirred. Reaching out, Khouren did as he’d done a thousand times before, brushing his bare fingers gently over those beautiful curls. She sighed in the night. Her little frown eased. A rapturous peace stole over her face, lifting the corners of her lips. Oh, how she smiled for him. It filled Khouren with such light, his heart bright as a thousand suns to feel it, that smile, that benevolence. She had never been Goldenmarked, it was not her who was called to be his Rennkavi, but if it had been, Khouren would have followed her beyond the grave. Of royal blood from two ancient lines, Khehemni through her mother, Alrashemni through her father, she was the same as his Rennkavi. Just the same. Except he’d been Marked and she had not.

  Khouren smiled gently
in the darkness, still brushing his fingers tenderly over her curls. Just the barest touch, as if a breeze of the night stirred them. She sighed for him again, curling deeper into her thin blanket upon her pallet. She turned her face up, feeling him, sensing him. But still she dreamed deep; Khouren had timed it perfectly. Her smile was bliss, her face beloved for him, all for him. Every time he had touched her, just like this, she’d shone like sunlight upon water, all for him.

  Her lips fell open with a soft sigh. She made a subtle writhing movement, wanting. Slowly, without making a sound, Khouren leaned down, until his lips hovered over hers. She turned her face up more, a small sound issuing from her throat. Slowly, Khouren lifted his other hand to her jaw, touching his fingertips to that luminous skin, a caress of wind. She mewled again in her dreams, feeling him. Wanting him. And like the night wind, Khouren lifted his chin, whispering his lips over hers, tasting her, breathing her in. Lingering, he gave her peace and took his own with that kiss, in the deadly silence of the cells, nothing to disturb them.

  When it was finished, she sighed for him, her lips curling into a sweet smile. Khouren’s lips were so near hers, drinking her in. “I love you.” He whispered to the night.

  She snuggled down into her thin blanket, smiling, beatific. “Alden…” She sighed.

  Khouren lifted his chin, nuzzling her nose, just a little, just like the Dhenir had once done. “Always.” He murmured back.

  And then he rose. And like a dream, melted back into the wall, to watch over her until dawn.

  CHAPTER 35 – ELOHL

  The day of the coronation dawned hot, a high cloud-laced sky heavy with humidity, which quickly began gathering into burgeoning towers of cumulus. Sweat trickled down Elohl’s face as he stood at attention in the Small Hall. There were thirty Guardsmen here already, all stock-still, all waiting just like Elohl. They’d spent all morning securing routes from the Dhenra and King Therel’s apartments, clearing them of personnel. And all of the noontime hour sweeping the Throne Hall, the Small Hall, and their adjacent rooms for the merriment that would take place after the ceremonies.

  But the nobles were not here yet. The hall was still empty except for Guardsmen. Elohl gazed at the tall blonde thief, Luc, now in cobalt gear directly across from him in the niche on the far wall. The younger thief Gherris was further down the row, sullen with his perpetual snarl. But Luc held Elohl’s gaze, haughty and angry. They hadn’t exchanged two words to each other, except that when the man arrived, he had told Elohl that Ghrenna had a vision of the Dhenra getting hurt, possibly soon.

  Suddenly, the double-doors at the end of the hall boomed open, admitting a weak draft in the sweltering mid-afternoon heat. A procession of Chancellors strolled across the inlaid white marble floor, talking amongst themselves. A small army of maids hustled about the room, directed by a tall, lean man Elohl recognized as the King’s Castellan. The Castellan directed the maids with firm smoothness, making sure everything was in last-minute order. As porters wheeled in trestle-tables with pitchers of lemon water to place along the richly plastered and gilded walls, the Castellan's gaze took in all the Guardsmen about the room with a flicker of distaste.

  Elohl’s throat was parched. He salivated at the thought of water freshened with lemon. But this hardship was little compared to what he had faced in the highmountains. Another drip of sweat rolled down his face, slowing at his short beard, itching. He didn’t scratch, he didn’t flinch, he didn’t move. But he found himself thinking about the feel of ice beneath his bare hands, the sensation of cold wind across his neck from a glacier.

  It helped. Marginally.

  After the maids, various lords and ladies began filing in. Only those of highest station were permitted to the Signing, the Duchevies and wealthy merchant houses, small as this hall was. Elohl narrowed his eyes upon the retinue of leather- and fur-clad men and women from Elsthemen, noting a plethora of weapons about them. But all seemed in a high gay mood, chattering amongst themselves in their rolling native Elsthemi. Elohl picked out the thief Shara, who blended in nicely with a retinue from the Tourmaline Isles. Masquerading as a noble, her silken dress in the hodgepodge Isleman fashion managed to be quite scandalous, though Elohl knew there were knives hidden beneath. All smiles and wilting, fanning flirtation, she was expert at intrigue, drawing a crowd of men even now. Few faces, Elohl noted, held even a neutral closure today. Expectation sang high and bright in the hall, eager and merry. Virtually no one scowled, except for a man who had been identified to him by Fenton as Chancellor Theroun den’Vekir, off to one side, speaking low with his apprentice.

  At last, a clarion call sounded. The clear, ringing fanfare of hunting horns split the humid air, signifying the Dhenra and her King’s approach. It was Elohl’s signal. As the nobles stirred to look and conversation died, Guardsmen worked their way forward, positioning themselves in a spread double-line on either side of the long red carpet, from the entrance to the gilded desk with its lit candelabra and pots of flowering cobalt lilac at the front of the room. Hands on swords, they pressed the crowd back with their presence and hard eyes, corralling the nobles away from the red carpet to make way.

  Elohl watched the Dhenra and her King approach from the corner of his eye, holding the line though nobles pressed forward, craning their necks to get a look at the royal pair. They were resplendent. Dhenra Elyasin den’Ildrian wore a clinging gown of snow-blue silk with cobalt trimmings, Alrou-Mendera’s colors, the long train whispering behind her. Her person dripped with jewelry of sapphires. Her golden tresses were wound up through a sapphire circlet with diamonds set in gold, and she wore the white ermine Stole of the Queen about her shoulders.

  King Therel Alramir had dressed accordingly, in crimson for the keshar-banner of Elsthemen. Richly brocaded black breeches rode his thighs, chased with gold thread, and a crimson cape cascaded from his shoulders, embroidered the same, a plain circlet of gold upon his brow and white-blonde hair. But he'd maintained the wilder look of the Highlands, a grey wolf-pelt over his cape, a black leather jerkin with plain buckles on beneath. His tall black boots were just as functional, buckled with their twin bootknives. Almost predatory, his pale blue eyes swept the hall as he moved forward down the red velvet carpet with his soon-to-be-Queen upon his arm.

  As King Therel and Dhenra Elyasin stepped to the desk at the front of the hall, their retinue of four Guardsmen parted. Fenton was among them, and Olea's Second-Lieutenant Aldris den’Farahan. Elohl stood close to the desk at his position by the head of the red carpet, Luc across from him. The Dhenra and King stood before the desk, a few of Therel’s Highswords close near the Dhenra’s guards. A skinny old man with a hound-wrinkled face stepped behind the desk and raised his arms, golden medallions of office winking across his shoulders and over the front of his rich black velvet robes with gold their embroidery. Another blast of clarion rang from the horns. Fenton had told Elohl that Chancellor Evshein den’Lhamann was master of these proceedings, and he raised his thin, reedy voice in welcome.

  Elohl’s gaze raked the attendants of the Dhenra and King Therel, and the nearby nobility. A thin lord with bushy white eyebrows sniffed and itched his nose. A woman in green silk reached to her cleavage, but it was only a lace handkerchief she withdrew to mop her face. King Therel’s white-haired First Sword shifted his stance, watching the Chancellor with boredom, two hands settled easily upon the pommel of his sword. A dark-haired man from the Isles contingent grumbled and reached into his lapels, but it was only for a set of gold-rimmed spectacles. The King’s Castellan was hovering back by the paneled wall, immaculately still in his grey silk, hands clasped servilely. A woman in pink silk reached around surreptitiously to her behind, but it was only for a good scratch, relief flooding her face.

  The Chancellor had concluded his speech. The Dhenra was saying a few words. Heads nodded, faces smiled. Handkerchiefs and starched lace fans were stilled so that all present could hear in the stifling space. A boom of thunder sounded suddenly, ringing through the hall. A numb
er of people jumped at the sound. After its rolling wave died, the Dhenra continued, calm and practiced. Elohl’s gaze fell upon Fenton, seeing him tight with a collected tension, his gaze fierce, rapt upon Elyasin. She finished, and then King Therel Alramir said a few noble words. One hand upon his sword, the other ready at his longknife upon his belt, Elohl kept sweeping the room. More people mopped faces, cleavage, fanning themselves, the heat in the space thick now. Another boom of thunder rippled the hall. A few nobles were moving to the walls, enjoying a chalice of lemon-water as the proceedings dragged on.

  At last, it was time for the signing. Elohl had been informed that there were to be two signings, the first a Pledge of Queenship for Elyasin alone to sign, conferring to her the authority of ruling monarch of Alrou-Mendera. The following coronation was all pomp and show. The second was to be the Writ of Marriage, securing the alignment of a Queen-proper to a King. Dhenra Elyasin said a few words. And then her Chancellor did, handing her a gilded fountain-pen with a frond-like tourli-feather to write with, and then a small, ornately-worked scepter. Dipping her pen in a gilded inkwell, Elyasin affixed her signature to the first document while holding the scepter. The Chancellor raised his hands, said a brief sentence, and the hall erupted into applause.

  It went on a long while. Elohl’s eyes roved the hall, watching.

  The clapping died down. Elyasin handed the scepter back to the Chancellor, who set it to the side in its velvet-lined box. The pen she handed to King Therel Alramir, who dipped it in the gilded inkwell. After reciting a short pledge, he bent and affixed his name to the second document. He handed the fountain-pen back to the Dhenra. Elyasin dipped the pen, recited her pledge. She bent, scrawling her name.

  And that’s when Elohl saw it. More than saw it, he felt it. Like a push, a nudge from the area of the desk, he felt the movement of King Therel’s First Sword. Elohl’s gaze snapped to the white-haired man. Saw the way his stance changed, just a shift of the hips and feet. But it put the Dhenra within reach of the tip of that long, plain steel sword at his hip.