Blackmark (The Kingsmen Chronicles #1): An Epic Fantasy Adventure Sword and Highland Magic

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  In the dream, the sun bore down into a blistering madness of high noon. Summer dust blew around Ghrenna's boots, as she and Elohl and the others held their postures, weapons bared in a prickly ring of death. A dream of memories ten years gone, Ghrenna twisted in her sheets, feeling it all again.

  The only sound upon the wind was their hard breathing, so scared. So young. So untested in war. Clad in earthen tones and forest greens rather than the traditional Kingsmen greys, Ghrenna’s dark blue eyes darted beneath her hood. They met Suchinne’s steady brown ones, then moved back to the cobalt-jerkined Guardsman before her. From all around the upper galleries of the practice yard's amphitheater at Alrashesh, the click of arrows nocked to bows came to Ghrenna's ears. Archers were fixed and ready, their attention steely upon the five Seventh Seals in their tight standoff in the dusty center of the amphitheater. The creak of leather and the crunch of steel came as swordsmen shifted their stances in a ring around the five Kingskinder, holding the standoff with blades bared.

  A pair of ravens winged above, calling out in a cacophony of displeasure.

  Sweat trickled beneath Ghrenna's arms from the strain of holding her bow steady, her arrow trained upon the heart of the swordsman directly in front of her. Ultimate stillness filled her, tense fear. Pacing herself, Ghrenna counted each breath, trying to keep her mounting headache at bay, trying to keep her arms from trembling. The joints of her neck ached and the sun was too bright. One of her worst spells was coming. On its way because of their failure upon their errand at Roushenn Palace this past day, and now because of the trap they had stumbled into coming back to Alrashesh.

  Her quiver chafed where it was slung across her back, from hard running returning from the Alranstone glen. Her longknives dragged her leather belt across her hips. Fighting the pain that was coming like a landslide, Ghrenna forced herself into further stillness, willing her arms to hold firm. She'd be a pincushion of arrows from palace archers in the upper galleries if she slipped and loosed her shot.

  If any of them moved, she and Elohl and the rest would all die together.

  “As I said,” the stocky Roushenn Palace Guardsman in his cobalt jerkin before Elohl rumbled again. “There's no need to die today. Put down your weapons. We have only a few questions for you.”

  “Bullshit!” Dherran snarled from Ghrenna's left.

  “We already told you.” Olea's voice was reasonable to Ghrenna’s right, next to Elohl. “Our families marched three days ago for Lintesh, as they were supposed to for the King's Summons. The younger Kingskinder have been sent to the Court of Dhemman while our families are away. Only us five Seventh Seals were left behind, to caretake Alrashesh while our elders are away at the palace renewing their vows. We were just out hunting this morning.”

  It was a weak ruse. Olea had always been a terrible liar. The Guardsman before them chuckled. “Can't negotiate your way out of this mess, girl. We're here for you, and the other Kingsmen children. To keep you... safe for the King. Trust in him now while your parents are away and come with us.”

  Dherran answered him with a hot-tempered bark. “You're here to slaughter us! Our parents were summoned to their deaths! As traitors! By the hand of King Uhlas den’Ildrian! How can you say we should trust in him? The Kingskinder are somewhere safe, as planned by our people, and we'll die before we give them up. So go fuck yourself. And your King.”

  Dherran spat at the man, florid. He was working himself into a rage now, and once he did, even Elohl couldn’t stop him. He was going to lash out, and soon, breaking their tight circle of protection. But from the corner of her left eye, Ghrenna saw petite Suchinne step forward in her green forest leathers, her fingers falling lightly upon Dherran’s clenched fist where he gripped the handle of his leveled sword, white-knuckled. Dherran shivered. The raging boar broke beneath Suchinne’s steady dark gaze. And though he growled at her intervention, he stepped back, their ring solid and unbroken.

  Ghrenna watched their tender interaction from the side of her eye, but something told her to run rather than stand here. Something rippled inside her, her headache drumming hard in her temples. Something was coming, something worse than the trap of Guardsmen they had stumbled into coming back to Alrashesh. Something she could feel in her mind, crackling with the energy of an oncoming storm.

  The stocky Guardsman answered Dherran with a chuckle, resting his hands atop the pommel of his sheathed sword. “Where is the famous Kingsman patience I have heard of?”

  Elohl stepped forward then, to stand in the sightline between the Guardsman and Dherran, whom Suchinne was still pacifying with a steady hand. Elohl was slender, but had an advantage of height on the blue-jerkined guard, and Ghrenna knew those grey eyes of Elohl’s were unnerving in the extreme, when he used them right. As he did now. The Guardsman shifted, uncomfortable.

  It was Olea who spoke, her pacifying gestures well-practiced. “Please. We've told you everything. If your men are weary, you are of course welcome to rest...”

  Lies.

  A single word came from beyond the amphitheater, a strong baritone pummeling the summer air like thunder, rolling all the way to the edge of the vast practice ground. The voice seemed outside Ghrenna’s ears and yet not, a rippling, rolling sensation within her mind that tilted her equilibrium and made her stomach clench in a violent knot, sick. Summoned to that voice, Ghrenna felt the pain of a vision surfacing. Lancing erupted inside her head. An unstoppable firebrand thrust through her mind, splitting it from mid-brow to the back of her skull. Her legs turned to water, her eyelids fluttered. She collapsed with a cry, spilling to hands and knees in the dirt of the amphitheater, her bow dropped to the dust.

  Her vision was horrible. Images ripped through her head. Vomit rose. She clenched her teeth. Vaguely, she was aware of Elohl, urging her to breathe as he pulled her into his arms and cradled her in the dirt. Of his hand cupping her brow, cool and gentle. At last, her spasms ceased and the images subsided. The pain began to roll back, but still beat with her pulse like an Elsthemi war-drum. The torture of the vision flooded her, every vile scene, every terrible promise of it. Something unescapable. A promise that voice had made inside her mind, triggering this brutality. The certainty that everything she’d just seen, everything she feared, was about to become reality.

  Right now.

  Through gritted teeth, Ghrenna was at last able to speak what she had seen. “They're going to capture us, Elohl... all the Kingskinder. I saw it. He's coming...”

  “Who’s coming?” Elohl murmured gently by her ear, cradling her close. “What do you mean, Ghren? What did you see just now?”

  “Witch!” The big Guardsman growled, full of hate, his face ashen. A ripple of unease spread through the archers and swordsmen at his accusation. But that one word speared Ghrenna. That taunt from her early childhood in the frozen wastes of the northern tundra. So many people had spat that word at her, spat that word at a little girl who could only absorb the terror of their hate. And it had continued as she’d grown. Never from the Alrashemni, her adopted kin, but from villagers, simple people who knew only to hate someone different. Someone outlandish. Elohl had gone very still, cradling Ghrenna in the dirt. He knew what that word meant to her.

  “Leave her be.” Elohl’s soft murmur carried to each and every ear on the tense silence of amazed men. His stillness pressed through the amphitheater of the practice yard like an icy wind. His words barely audible, their tone nevertheless carried unmistakable authority, just like his father. He helped Ghrenna to her feet, and for a moment, their eyes locked. Ghrenna felt Elohl’s chill tension. Everything had gone terribly wrong at Roushenn Palace this day. She didn’t have to touch him to feel his emotions, though touching made it stronger. Elohl was a chasm of stillness to most people, but Ghrenna could feel his turbulent currents, every boulder and eddy.

  And right now he was drowning, drowning in a bleak, torpid despair. One quick glance showed his depths, more tortured than Ghrenna had ever seen them, confirming his fail
ure. Despair that they would survive this. Despair that he’d not found the ring she’d seen in her vision, made of star-metal with a ruby like a drop of blood at its center, a dragon and wolf fighting around it. Despair now, that they were surrounded upon their return to Alrashesh and had few options left.

  Despair that he’d failed to keep any of them safe.

  But more than his torture, Ghrenna saw in Elohl's storm-grey eyes the magnetism that drew them together time and time again. For a moment, neither could look away, though the world crumbled around them. It gave Ghrenna strength, and she quieted, finding that place of deep, emotionless stillness she needed to keep her pains at bay.

  At last, she pulled away, able to stand on her own. She left her bow in the dirt, her arms trembling too much to draw it. Unsheathing her longknives instead, she settled into a ready crouch. Elohl turned to the stocky Guardsman, leveling his sword. Waves of rage rippled from him. Unlike his twin, Elohl was slow to anger, but once he did, it was glacier-cold.

  Deadly.

  “We have no quarrel with you, Guardsman, just as we have no quarrel with our liege King Uhlas den'Ildrian, to whom we Alrashemni Kingsmen are consummately faithful.” Elohl’s grey eyes bored into the guard, flat and merciless like chips of the Kingsmount. “But it’s up to us to protect the Kingskinder, until our families return. Not our King. So if you wish to die today, step forward to take even a single one of us, or threaten the Kingskinder again. And know, that any who slaughter a Kingsman or Kingskinder unjustly will pay the Fifth Price. This is the vow of our people.”

  Uncertain glances were shared among the swordsmen. The big Guardsman chuckled, but beneath his bravado, fear showed. “An oath of vengeance? That you'll come and kill five out of every six people we know? Isn't that a bit extreme, lad?”

  “Come for us, and see what Kingsmen truly are.” Elohl's voice was cold. Ghrenna could see the fury that burned icy within him.

  But the ranks of blades parted suddenly as an approaching figure from the edge of the amphitheater crunched to the front, his face hidden in the deep shadows of his hood. A sliding sensation moved through Ghrenna, a slipping feeling in her mind, churning her stomach. She knew suddenly, from whence that voice in her mind had come that had triggered her vision with but a single word. The Guardsman and the rest of his ilk in cobalt stepped aside to admit the unhurried man. His garb was of a foreign make, a herringbone weave of blackened leather set with metal studs forming his armored jerkin, his gauntlets and greaves the same. A two-handed broadsword rode his back, and his stature was enormous, towering even over Elohl, his torso and limbs mercilessly thick and strong.

  “What have the Kingsmen gotten themselves into this time?” The man’s speech held a lilting accent from far to the east. His chuckle grated like fists over gravel. He drew his sword from his back in a long, slow arc, and came to lean upon the pommel with the tip planted nonchalantly in the dust. “Oh, my thousand pardons. Kingskinder. These ones are Inked, but they've not earned it yet, have they?”

  Ghrenna felt something slide deeper into her mind upon the tide of that voice, like a snake slithering into her thoughts. Stiffening, she pulled her mind back, deeper into stillness as her headache flared miserably. A keening cry spilled from her lips, unstoppable, to the fury of her agony.

  “Whatever you're doing to her, stop it.” Elohl's growl barely reached her.

  “See my face, boy.” The man grated. “Know the one who will break your northern friend. And you.” The black-armored swordsman lifted one gauntleted hand, cast back his hood to reveal a strong-boned face deeply tanned. Full in his prime, he had thick lips and high cheekbones, grey streaks in his brown hair. The swordsman eyed Elohl from his towering height, and Ghrenna heard Elohl hiss in surprise.

  “I nearly had you at the Alranstone this morning, boy.” The man’s lips twisted up in subtle humor. “But there’s no Stone here to wrest you from me now. The Stone thought it was being so very clever, defying me, but had it been more aware, it would have known that I have my own means of following my prey. Let us continue what was so rudely interrupted, lad. Show me now. Let me feel what you witnessed last night that you shouldn’t have… open for me…”

  And then, Ghrenna saw something she thought she’d never witness. With a dire cry, Elohl fell to his knees in the dust, trembling violently. His gaze pinned to the man in herringbone leathers, sinew stood out in Elohl’s neck as he strained against whatever was happening, his breath hard and fast. His pulse pounded at the side of his neck. He cried out again, softer this time, shivering. He narrowed his eyes as if to close them, but they stopped, arrested, eyelashes trembling from strain, his jaw clenched in a rictus of pain.

  The man in herringbone leathers cocked his head. And with a soft smile, he moved his chin, and Elohl was suddenly released. Panting hard, Elohl’s head fell, hanging, a cry of pain issuing out upon his breath. “Nothing,” the black-clad man murmured, bemused. “You overheard nothing of import, at least, in the palace. It is just as well. I do not welcome spilling the blood of Leith’s line from your throat today, boy. Thin though it is. But you.” And suddenly, the man’s hard gaze came to rest upon Ghrenna. “You are another matter, girl.”

  Our kind get more than name-calling of witchery, you know. The man’s dagger-keen thoughts pierced Ghrenna’s mind, slicing through her carefully-woven protection. We get burned as children. Set to the torch. You should see my scars, northern girl, when my village tried to burn me for what we can do. Count yourself lucky that your family simply gave you away. Ah... but you don't know yet what you can do, do you? If you did know, you could stop me. Open for me now. Open, northern girl... spill to me the secrets I want to know.

  With an awful sneer of dominance upon his thick lips, the man's consciousness slammed through Ghrenna like a fist. Her mind broke. Her barriers crumbled. She screamed as she fell to the dust, as his touch wormed into her, uncovering her thoughts.

  Uncovering what she had just seen in her vision.

  Ghrenna couldn't stop him as she twisted in agony over Halsos’ Fire, writhing in the dust of the practice yard. Broken, her mind flickered through the images of her vision, revealing it all to the man in herringbone leathers as she babbled between screams about how he would find the location of the Kingskinder. About how he would find the trail to the ruined fort, by the old beech grove at the foot of the mountains. How he would find them all, catching every last child of the Kingsmen and clapping them in irons.

  She was vaguely aware that her wrists and ankles were being shackled as she writhed and shrieked in the dust. That Elohl and the others were subjected to the same, though they only screamed nonsense in their twisting agony. That the man in the black armor had broken them all with a thought, rendered all their battle training useless as they curled into helpless balls from never-ending pain.

  He laughed as he had them secured, hoisted like sacks of twitching grain over the shoulders of swordsmen. Ghrenna faded to darkness as she passed out, the man's rolling laugh still in her ears.