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

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  Olea entered the wide barn doors, to find herself in a cheerfully-lit workshop. The mountainous man she had trailed from the fountain stood at ease beside a long workbench. An acrid tang of metals and smelting reached her, a fire crackling merrily in a hearth big enough for forging and equipped with bellows. But rather than the larger tools one noted in a smithy, this workshop had careful racks of well-polished small instruments, and progressive magnifying apparatus upon every workbench. A display of fine silver and goldworks stood to one side of the doors, the collected bracelets and earcuffs and filigreed amulets pieces to show an artman's craft. And the delicate filigree Olea spied within was very fine, its construction careful with thought.

  Which was all at odds with the enormous man who now faced her, waiting stock-still a few paces inside the door, but not so close that Olea felt threatened. He watched her as she surveyed the room, noting every corner, every niche, then settled upon his massive physique. Olea gazed upon a long rent of scarring down his face, saw how it trailed down the side of his neck and over his collarbone. Leading to a patch of vicious scars upon his broad chest, just visible where his homespun shirt laced. His gaze traced her also, landing upon her Inkings.

  “You are careful,” he said at last, in a rumbling basso like boulders colliding.

  “I was trained to be careful.”

  “Show me.”

  “You first.” Olea narrowed her eyes upon him.

  He sighed like trees falling down a ravine. And then began to strip off his brown leather jerkin. Pulling his white lambswool shirt off over his head, he relaxed his shoulders, careful to not rip the fine weave. His shirt he folded neatly and laid upon the bench as Olea perused his brutishly alluring bulk. The first thing she noticed was that he had no Inking, no trace of Kingsmount and Stars. The second thing she noticed was that the man was built like a bull. Rippling muscle moved in his arms, chest, and stomach, and it would have been intimidating but for the strange gentleness Olea felt in his nature.

  But the scarring in the center of his chest was what truly caught her attention. Ruinous, they were where an Inking should have been, old scars whitened with time and puckered. If he had taken a sword through the heart so terrible as the scars suggested, it would have killed him. But no wound of battle had made those, nor the strange trailing scars that tore their way from the left side of his square-jawed face and down over his collarbone to his brawny chest.

  “I burned it off.” The Kingsman rumbled at last, watching Olea. “It took seven applications of searing iron to get the whole Inking.”

  “Why?” Olea whispered, horrified and awed.

  “It hurt too much, knowing I had failed our kin.”

  Olea’s throat tightened, tears pricked. His statement, so simple, had touched her in a place so deep it had no name. And then her fingers were shucking her baldric from her shoulder, unbuckling her leather Guardsman jerkin, unlacing her shirt. And then it was all off, her trappings of palace life cast to the floor like so much rubbish. She stood, her woe and pride bared before the Kingsman, her kin, the only one she had ever met since the horror of the Summons. Olea breathed the metallic air of the workshop with her breasts and torso cold to the night air.

  His eyes softened, taking her in, seeing what was written upon her heart in black Ink. At last, he gave a rumbling sigh. “You’re too young. You would have been a child when that was done.”

  “I was twenty. I had my Seventh Seal.”

  “And so you gave yourself your Eighth. Without the community’s approval.”

  “I had my community’s approval.” Olea growled, dipping briefly to retrieve her shirt and pull it back on. “Five of us, all Seventh Seals, one of us who knew the Way of Ink marked us. We had the khemri venom. We had our Eighth Seal dreams. We survived them. And we did it because the rest of our community was about to die, Summoned by a traitorous King.”

  They faced each other a moment, Olea bristling, angry. She had trained herself to be thick-skinned, but feeling a Kingsman's disapproval was something else. But the stern, gentle mountain crumbled before her. Slowly, the big man came to one knee, the palm of his right hand settling to the mass of scars in the center of his chest. His other hand dropped to his side, where a sword should have been. He bowed his head, and in the light of the workshop lamps, Olea saw tears.

  “Eighth Seal,” the Kingsman murmured in his rumbling basso. “Your community welcomes you. The Alrashemni Kingsmen welcome you. Awaken to your new life, Chirus Alrashemni, and to your purpose.”

  Olea stood tall, her anger whisked away in a wash of ferocious pride. If he could have shattered any further, the Kingsman did, tears cascading down his square-jawed face. Olea strode forward, kneeling before the massive man, gripping his face in both hands.

  “You welcome me… without knowing anything about me?”

  “You are one of us. One of the last of us. How could I not welcome you?” The silversmith’s dark grey eyes were red with pain. Olea pulled his face close, driven by some unknown instinct. It startled him, and she felt him almost pull away. But then the Kingsman gave a great shuddering sigh. Their lips met, just a touch. A long moment passed, a touching of hearts, and then the moment broke and they both pulled back.

  It wasn’t love, and it wasn’t lust. But it was like coming home.

  Olea wound her arms up around his neck. And with great tenderness, the mountain of a Kingsman with a broken heart and burned-off Inkings brushed a hand over her hair, soft and slow. His thick muscles were solid beneath Olea's hands. His half-bound black curls, so much like her own, shone in the lamplight above his scarred face. Olea hadn’t expected him to soothe her pain, long years of loneliness and woe, simply by holding her as they knelt upon the workshop floor. But when he finally helped her to her feet as he came to his own, he looked down at her with fierce pride, brightening her empty life. And for his part, he couldn’t cease stroking her curls with one massive hand, and Olea didn’t stop him. Her sword-calloused fingers reached up, tracing the man's scars.

  “Kingsman,” Olea murmured. “I don’t even know your name.”

  He chuckled, relief flickering over his scarred visage. “Vargen. Vargen den’Khalderian. Silversmith.”

  “My name is Olea den’Alrahel.”

  “Alrahel?” His dark eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You must be Rakhan Urloel’s daughter, from Alrashesh.”

  Olea pulled back a little, surprised that he would know of her. “I don’t remember any Vargen in Alrashesh. I would have remembered you.”

  “I’m not from Alrashesh. I’m from the Third Court, from Dhemman.” The Kingsman was thoughtful, his face the chiseled wisdom of ancient gods. But his mouth was sweet, his demeanor kind despite the twisting line of his scar across his visage.

  “I’ve never been to Dhemman.”

  His massive paw touched her curls, reverently. “It’s in the mountains. We were Summoned, same as you. All the Courts met upon the Kingsroad. We marched upon Lintesh as one. When I survived and fled back to Dhemman, it had been emptied. Our children were gone. I traveled all that winter, to the First Court of Alrashesh, and then to the Second Court of Valdhera. They were the same. Abandoned. Looted. Empty but for crows and wolves and pikefish in the streams.”

  “We were captured,” Olea murmured. “Split up. The younger ones sent to foster homes and the older ones pressed into military service.”

  The Kingsman's breath caught in his throat. “There are more? Safe? Alive?”

  “A few, as far as I know. Did you… have a child?”

  Vargen sighed, his stout fingers still touching her curls. “I did. A son. His name was Khergen. He was eleven when his mother and I had to leave him for the Summons. I’ve looked everywhere for him. Every year, I pick up my shop and move to a new city. But not so many of our children have the telltale Alrashemni look as you and I. Khergen was blonde like his mother, with green eyes. And now I don’t know what he might look like. I may never find him.”

  “I’m su
re he would remember his father. He will find you.”

  The Kingsman Vargen brushed back her riotous tumble of blue-black curls. “It is kind of you to say, but I don’t hold much hope. Not after so long. But I pledge myself to you, as best I can, Kingswoman. Know that my hands are yours. My sword is yours, as I should have protected all our kin the first time.”

  “Do you even have a sword still?”

  “I do. My own sword is in a trunk in the back. Along with everything else.”

  Olea's fingertips trailed over his scars, still visible above the edge of his shirt lacings. “So you burned your dedication away, but kept the trappings?”

  “Men do things they don't understand... when they grieve.”

  “And the rest of your family?” Olea hated to ask.

  The Kingsman's deep breath told her everything she needed to know. That single breath of their training. That single moment, to feel everything of one's emotions in a riot before stilling them beneath the calm for which Kingsmen were famed.

  A single breath, in which to feel all the heartbreak of the world.

  “My wife died. Elsiria died the night we came to Roushenn Palace. Along with all the rest of the Kingsmen.”

  And suddenly, Olea knew what story he would tell. A story of heartache and pain, misery and death. In Vargen's sorrowful grey gaze, she read that none of the Kingsmen had survived. That each and every one of them that had traveled to the palace for the Summons had met a horrible end. In his single breath, he had stilled a mountain of emotions for which there were no words.

  A woe that was beyond weeping.

  “Tell me,” Olea whispered at last. “Tell me everything.”