Goldenmark

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  “Dry bones we shall have,” Lhaurent shot back, “but not before yours bleed.”

  “Threatening me?” Temlin growled, grinning.

  “Threats?” Lhaurent gave a subtle chuckle, but his eyes were dark as the ocean’s floor. “I hardly need to threaten your ancient forces. No, I believe persuasion is in order. And then we may resume our negotiations for the welfare of our great nation.”

  Rising from his throne, Lhaurent lifted his hands. Suddenly, the sham of negotiation was over. Khouren saw Lhaurent’s hands tense, saw him focus upon the Abbey walls two hundred paces distant. Temlin noted it, too, a fast wariness crossing his features. With a quick hand, he reached in the open collar of his longjacket and whisked out two thin cobalt volumes, holding them up. Lhaurent paused, a look of eagerness sliding across his features before he stowed it carefully away.

  “Destroy my Abbey, asshole, and you’ll never be legitimate.” Temlin’s growl ate the afternoon beneath the crack of the silk awning.

  “I don’t need books to prove my legitimacy,” Lhaurent spoke dismissively.

  “Oh, but you do,” Temlin snarled. “You know it and I know it. No matter how much magic you have, you’ll have to fight ten times harder for what you want if our neighboring nations think you’re a piece of lowborn sheep-shit. Now. Let’s negotiate.”

  Lhaurent went immaculately still. As if he’d disappeared, Khouren could barely feel the man beneath the pavilion. Only chill waters that knew their purpose – to drown the resistant. Anyone and anything that opposed them, or insulted them.

  “You have no clue as to the circumstances of my birth.” Lhaurent’s words were dead ice.

  Temlin’s lips twisted in a mean smirk. “Oh, but I do. Alranstones talk, Lhaurent. Did you know that? You may be able to step inside them and bend them into traveling where you wish, but there are those who resist you. And guess what? My beloved Mollia den’Lhorissian – you remember Molli, surely – is trapped inside a Stone now. And she likes to talk to a very particular Alranstone. One who gave you those markings you bear.”

  Khouren perked within the fountain, on high alert. Baiting Lhaurent was never wise, especially in regards to his murky past. Even Khouren did not know about Lhaurent’s life before he came to Roushenn as a young man already Goldenmarked. Lhaurent had never spoken to Khouren of his early life, nor his birth. And now, Lhaurent was as deadly as Khouren had ever seen him.

  “Go on,” Lhaurent murmured softly, “tell me about my origin, son of Kings.”

  Temlin was missing all the signs. Warning screamed through Khouren’s every sinew. Lhaurent was so still it was as if he’d turned into the ocean itself, standing immaculately calm before his throne – right before the storm.

  Still, the King-Protectorate had to open his rash, snarky mouth. Khouren’s heart screamed, as Temlin’s green eyes flashed fire. “You were born in the Kingsmountains, in a small valley not far from the Elsee. Your mother was Alrashemni Kingsman, a fighter of the den’Alrahel lineage stationed up in the mountains on patrol. She met a ranger in those lonely wildlands, a Khehemnas, a warrior tall of stature with blind eyes and a war-axe across his back. He told her his surname was Alodwine. He told her he carried the ancient royal blood of Khehem, and from their union would be born a child of twinned blood, a savior to rule the worlds of men – the Rennkavi. He convinced her, and took her, and left her in the lurch. She retreated to a cabin in that mountain vale, mind-broken and wild, and gave birth to twins – a little girl and a baby boy. A boy, who had strangled his twin sister in the womb with his umbilicus. Wrapped it around her neck three times and throttled her with it until she came out blue like she’d been drowned in the sea. Just like the eel you are. And do you know what else?”

  Lhaurent said nothing, his grey gaze glittering with stoic chill.

  “This Alranstone told Molli another tidbit,” Temlin continued with a growl. “That this youth it had marked so long ago, this murderer from the womb, had failed his naming. That the Alranstone had been tricked, by the force that young man’s belief in who and what he was, to impart the Goldenmarks. As that young man grew into a cruel and coldhearted bastard, the Alranstone knew its mistake: that the bloodlines the man carried were Alrahel, surely, but not twinned with the ancient Kings of Khehem. Lowborn. Common. Begat of a father who lied to this mother and seduced her for his own aims, before he disappeared like smoke into the wind. So who is your father, Lhaurent, truly? Tell me again that you don’t need these tomes I hold.”

  Khouren’s heart sickened into despair, as shock hammered through him. Could any of this be true? What if Lhaurent wasn’t a Scion of Khehem, but had only been raised from birth believing it so? Khouren thought back, to all his conflicts with the Rennkavi. To the times he’d walked away, disobeyed – and not been braised into smoldering ashes from his ancient oath. Lhaurent’s force of will was tremendous, a part of his own innate wyrria that had nothing to do with being the Rennkavi. But what if he wasn’t actually Alodwine blood, only believed himself to be so strongly that it had tricked an Alranstone – and tricked a High Priest of the Kreth-Hakir as well.

  Into believing he was the twinned blood of the true Rennkavi – when he was actually something else entirely.

  The Kreth-Hakir flanking Lhaurent’s throne shifted, their eyes tracking to Lhaurent, narrowing. Lhaurent stood very still. His emptiness was precise as his grey eyes stared Temlin down. “Keep your books and stories, scion of Kings past,” he spoke at last. “For my story is yet to be made.”

  Suddenly, it was as if the floodgates of hell opened, the rage of the entire ocean swallowing the day. A rigid tremor shook Lhaurent as he gathered a tremendous wyrria. Khouren felt his ears pop, even from inside the fountain, as if a tidal wave barreled down from the top of the Kingsmount. The Goldenmarks at the collar of Lhaurent’s garb seared, blinding. Temlin’s retinue moved fast into fighting crouches, but they were too late.

  Lhaurent gave a tremendous stretch as if gathering the entire city into himself. Then gripped the air and hauled all that rippling power right from the foundations of the Abbey.

  A rumbling roar consumed the avenue. Clockworks long-unused shrieked in Khouren’s ears. Stones began to heave, causing a crevasse to rip open in the avenue. The roaring shuddered the city, Guardsmen and civilians stumbling back with shouts of horror as the avenue peeled away from daylight into blackness. City-folk scrambled, shouting, trying to clamber over one another to escape the fast-widening crevasse. Folk fell into the black of the Unterhaft with terrible screams – as the crevasse lanced straight to the Abbey’s gate.

  Risen to his feet, Temlin stared in horror, shock opening his face as Khouren quailed inside the fountain. He’d never seen Lhaurent’s powers unfold with this kind of fury. Lhaurent had caused walls inside Roushenn to move, but this was fifty times that ability. With a grinding roar and a deafening sound, the Abbey’s main turrets began to shuffle and re-shape. Walls pulled from walls, rooftops slid back and descended, solid parapets opened, dumping those upon the walls to their deaths with horrific screams. Grindings and crunchings accompanied the shrieks of terrified people, as bones were churned in gears by an ancient, terrible magic.

  Leith Alodwine’s legacy – a city built to crush any invader. Except this city wasn’t devouring invaders, it was eating its own people.

  Lhaurent’s grey gaze shone with sick pleasure, occupied with his horrorshow. With the lesson he waged upon an entire city, to strike back at the heart of their King-Protectorate who dared challenge his validity, but the moment of Lhaurent’s obsession was the allies’ moment. Khouren saw Ihbram’s focus triple, his red weaves brightening like volcano-flame. Ihbram’s gaze flicked from the carnage, boring into the Kreth-Hakir Brother to Lhaurent’s right, one with a ripping scar across his throat. The Hakir’s leader here, their lynch-pin – smothering the man in blinding mind-weaves.

  Khouren launched from the fountain’s center like a wraith on the wind, longknives out. In three strides he was under the pavi
lion. Kreth-Hakir were turning; seeing him – too late. Khouren’s blades lashed out. Glorifying in his destruction, Lhaurent’s turn was slow. One of Khouren’s blades pierced deep into his guts, but the other missed Lhaurent’s throat as Lhaurent jerked away, his grey eyes wide. Khouren whipped his blades for Lhaurent’s flesh again, but was arrested by a silver lance in his mind. Escaped from Ihbram, the Kreth-Hakir with the mangled throat had rallied, freezing Khouren in a vise-grip.

  A knife thrust deep into Khouren’s side and he staggered. Lhaurent’s blade was vicious, shivving Khouren over and over in the flank. Ihbram roared as Khouren sagged with a gasp, his insides in ribbons as Lhaurent shivved him yet again. His red weave surging to arrest all the Hakir, Ihbram whipped a blade across Kreth-Hakir leader’s throat – releasing Khouren from the mind-bind only to fall limp upon the plaza’s flagstones at Lhaurent’s boots.

  “Cur! You should have stayed away.”

  Looming over Khouren with his right hand covering his own wound, Leith’s ruby shone upon Lhaurent’s index finger as if drinking the Alodwine blood that spattered it. The scent of shit wafted up Khouren’s nose. His vision swam red from Ihbram’s nearby battle with the remaining Kreth-Hakir. Fierce parries of red, vicious silver strikes. All Khouren could see were Lhaurent’s eyes, shining with pleasure as he readied his knife to strike out and slice Khouren a new throat.

  In that moment, it was Temlin who swept up behind Lhaurent. With a roar, the lion of den’Ildrian swiped his silvered white sword down – the ruby in the hilt and the runes along the blade flashing unnaturally as they matched the power of Lhaurent’s searing Goldenmarks. Slicing flesh like silk, the sword severed Lhaurent’s left arm at his shoulder. Lhaurent’s knife-hand thudded to the stones, spasming like a spider as his blade skittered away through Khouren’s blood.

  Lhaurent screamed. Clutching his gushing shoulder, his entire body vibrated. A terrible energy poured from him as his blood fountained out, like a hurricane over a raging ocean. The Goldenmarks at his collar blazed, obliterating Khouren’s vision as Temlin stumbled back with a cry.

  The flagstones of the plaza erupted in a seething tide – buckling the pavilion, white silk shredding like wolves eating doves. Khouren was blind as the blaze of the Goldenmarks devoured his mind, but somewhere in that obliteration, he found a thread of crimson. One thread, all that remained of Ihbram’s mind-protection in whatever terrible magic was igniting all around them from Lhaurent. Gritting his teeth against the hurricane of wyrria, Khouren clamped a hand on his wounds and hurled himself toward the red thread. His bloody hands found men where the thread ended and he seized them. Dropping them down into darkness, away from that sundering power, they splashed into a sewer far below the city.

  Khouren landed with a scream of pain, Ihbram’s hard grunt beside him. The florid curse was Temlin’s and Khouren’s heart surged to have found them both. His wounds roared as he hauled them up, but even though his decimated side seeped shit and blood, his flesh had already begun to knit.

  “What the fuck did you do?!” Ihbram rounded upon Temlin, his green eyes on fire as the foundations of the city roared above them.

  “I—” Temlin stared in horror at the sword in his hand. The runes upon it seared, Lhaurent’s blood making them glow red, but they had no more time as the ceiling of the sewers opened up to that obliterating power above.

  “With me!” Khouren gasped, hauling both men by their wrists.

  As Lhaurent’s rage enveloped them, flagstones rumbled and split. Fighting to stay conscious, Khouren had a death-grip on Temlin and Ihbram, running them through the sewers far beneath the city. Stars flared in his vision, but his wyrric sense of direction never failed. He could feel life beneath the earth ahead. The bright, solid sensation of Eleshen and Sebasos holding the Abbeystone grotto for them with a small group of Kingsmen.

  Men and women who would hold that position until death for their liege.

  Stone peeled away from Khouren’s feet and above his head as they ran. Chaos consumed the Unterhaft and the sewers, shit-choked greywater heaving around them. Up above, Lhaurent churned the milk and honey of the Abbey grounds into whipped butter as Khouren dashed through walls, gears, ancient furniture. The Abbey gate and its stolid walls crumbled down into the sewers, and Khouren dashed them through it. The oldest parts of the city groaned, churning and devouring souls. Blocks of stone came at them, walls moving and reeling. Vines and dirt collapsed as Khouren ran them beneath the Abbey’s grape arbors, through churning hole after hole. Lhaurent threw everything he had into that meat-grinder – pursuing his rebellious cur, the man who had bested his Kreth-Hakir, and the King who had maimed him, but the trio were fleet, sprinting until their lungs burned fire. Shifting his focus, Khouren dissipated them through churning walls, tumbling furniture, and cellars erupting into so much rubble.

  Suddenly, they arrived in the Abbeystone grotto, glowing in all its glory. Relief flooded Khouren to see the shocked faces of Eleshen, Sebasos, and their Kingsman retinue. With a hard gasp, Khouren released Ihbram and Temlin. Eleshen sheathed her weapons as Sebasos and the others raced forward to catch the trio from falling to their knees.

  “Quickly!” Khouren gasped as he gestured to the Abbeystone.

  Roaring smote their ears as the upper parts of the Abbey churned. The Kingsmen needed no second urging; hauling Ihbram and Temlin up, Sebasos and the others ran them toward the Abbeystone. Getting under Khouren’s shoulder, Eleshen dashed them just after. Sebasos and Ihbram slapped their palms to the Abbeystone, but just as Khouren and Eleshen dashed up, a terrible sundering consumed the grotto. Stones careened down as the floor above peeled back. The only one left, Temlin darted forward to haul Eleshen and Khouren toward the Abbeystone.

  But a byrunstone block ripped free from the level above, hurtling down just as he shoved them on. Khouren shot a hand toward Temlin. But the stone fell with the weight of promise, striking Temlin on the neck above his wyrric armor. Khouren touched him, too late. Their contact evaporated Temlin through the block, but the damage was done. Blood poured from Temlin’s mouth, his body crushed, his neck broken.

  Even as Khouren watched, the man’s fierce green eyes dimmed.

  A sound like an exploding gong hit Khouren’s ears. Like a thousand war-hammers striking copper, the peal came straight from the Abbeystone. Brightening in a terrible flash, the Stone was hued with every color of creation as Khouren seized Temlin’s hand, desperately slapping it to the Stone before the fierce King’s eyes could close. Rumbling devoured the chamber. An enormous crack split the ancient Plinth, opening it from within. The pealing sound overtook the grotto, pouring back again and again from the sundering stones to the collapsing walls. Khouren knew that the Abbeystone was vibrating itself to pieces. Not because the building collapsed, but because the woman inside it had made a decision – to sunder the Alranstone.

  Seizing Eleshen, Khouren ran them into the Stone without a moment to lose – and felt it shatter as they crossed over.

  * * *

  Temlin den’Ildrian had not made it through.

  And the way back was shut.

  Khouren knelt in the grass-choked amphitheater before the Alranstone in Gerrov-Tel, gasping for breath, one blood-slick hand bracing himself on the cracked flagstones. A vision of shattered shards consumed his mind, seen just before he crossed over, and Khouren knew that the Abbeystone had sundered. The brave woman who had occupied it, Mollia den’Lhorissian, had been released from her worldly torment at last – taking the soul of her beloved with her.

  Khouren choked. Tears sprung to his eyes. Pushing to standing and ignoring his wounds, he struck bloody fists to the Alranstone in the high mountain vale, screaming out his anguish. A midnight-black rage consumed him and he screamed again in torment. He could feel his wounds searing closed fast with the terrible depth of his conflict, but it wasn’t their pain that gripped him.

  It was a pain of the soul. That he had caused so much devastation by having believed Lhaurent. By having trust
ed Lhaurent’s conviction that he was a Scion of Khehem. That Khouren had ever given Lhaurent such powerful talismans as Leith’s ruby ring, and Fentleith’s blood upon Leith’s object at the heart of Roushenn. A power Lhaurent wielded, not because he was Wolf and Dragon – but because he had convinced everyone and everything that he was.

  Changing the course of history by convincing an Alranstone to give him the Goldenmarks.

  Khouren’s world went black and red, his vision searing blind with tears. It was a long while before he realized that Ihbram stood behind him, pinning his arms as he struggled and screamed. Eleshen had stepped to his front, holding his face in her hands and kissing his lips, her tears mingling with his.

  “It should have been me!” Khouren roared, struggling against Ihbram’s grip. “Not him – not him!”

  “Temlin knew the risk,” Eleshen kissed Khouren again. “Please! Please, Khouren! You did everything you could have—!”

  “No! I could have kept his hand in the grotto! I could have run him faster! I could have thrown him into the Stone! I—”

  “NO!” Eleshen gripped his face and shook him like a wayward puppy, her violet eyes full of tears. “No! What’s done is done. Because of you, because of everything you told us, the Kingsmen live, Khouren! Look around you! See the faces that have survived today because Temlin sacrificed as he did, and because you stepped into the light and brought us some hope against Lhaurent! See all the faces you’ve saved, Khouren! Not just the ones who didn’t make it.”

  Khouren fell still. His heart thundered in his chest, but now he saw the decrepit amphitheater full of faces in the glowing afternoon light through the pines. Old and young, woman and man, Jenner and Kingsman and Palace Guard. The Abbey had been emptied prior to the calamity and a few thousand people ringed him, staring in silent shock down the broad sweep of the amphitheater.