Goldenmark

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  “Shove over.” Naked, Dherran stepped over the tub’s rim. He eased into the water, carefully unwrapping Khenria’s bandage and pulling the laces on his ruined leather bracer to inspect his wrist. The cut was clean, a fast slice that had cut partway through the main flexor tendons but not much else, not even down to the arteries. He was lucky he’d been wearing bracers, but the injury left that hand useless, unable to make a fist or flex toward his body. The white slurry ate the blood, dissipating crimson into nothingness as the oils in the bath soothed his throbbing wrist. Ducking under and using his hale hand to scrub out his hair, Dherran surfaced and lay back against the angled rest, letting the salts ease his muscles.

  “Aeon, I could eat a house right now!” Khenria glanced at her shoulder – also a clean wound, the Vhinesse’s sword gone right through muscle but nothing else – then laid back against Dherran with a sigh.

  “That’s battle for you.” Dherran smoothed her curls away from her neck; kissed it. He was rising despite his fatigue and pain, and Khenria snuggled back against it.

  “How many battles have you been in, Dherran?”

  “Enough. Back before I left the Stone Valley Guard.” He kissed her neck again, his maimed body not protesting as much as it should at his arousal.

  “Is it always that... exhilarating?” She asked, as his good hand settled around her ribs.

  His palm smoothed up, cupping her perfect little breasts. “Not for everyone. Only for those who don’t fear death.” He was lost in the touch of her flesh now; in the scent of her skin as he breathed against her neck, kissed under her earlobe.

  “You don’t fear death?” She breathed as the steam lifted up around them. His fingertips teased her nipples and she arched with a small gasp.

  “No. I only fear letting someone control me.” He kissed her neck deeper, biting. She cried out, grinding her rear back against his pelvis – against his member, now eager to do battle all its own.

  “My fear’s... being abandoned.” She breathed as he bit her skin, deeper. “Don’t ever leave me, Dherran. If you do, I’ll hunt you down. I’ll take your balls—”

  “Shh...” Dherran turned her in his arms. She straddled him in the tub, her hands around his neck. She cried out as his cock brushed her, so thick and ready. Crushing her close with his arm, Dherran set his good hand to the bottom of the tub. Using it as leverage, he thrust his hips up, sinking into her. She arched back with a cry, but Dherran held her firm. She was not getting away from this. Not ever.

  “You’re mine, Khenria,” he rasped as he fucked her, deep and slow, her ankles locked around his ass. “Until the last breath leaves my body. Until the light dies in my eyes. Even after death – I swear I’ll haunt you...”

  Dherran’s breath failed. His words failed, lost in her. In the surge of her body and the flow of water and the tide of their breath as they moved. His breath came ragged and hers quickened. He thrust deeper, every ounce of his hard-won control used to prolong the moment. To feel her. To smell her – the hint of battle that still lay on her skin. To watch as she arched back against his grip, pulling upon his heart until he was buried with no escape.

  Her long fingers slipped over his jaw, her grey eyes shining with a passion no woman had ever matched, not even Suchinne. Dherran quickened, lost to her touch. His lust and love surged to her beloved fingertips, called to the passion inside of him. He cried out, feeling them come together. In that moment, Khenria gasped, spasming forward so hard their foreheads touched.

  A perfect moment filled Dherran, the twin of the one he’d felt in the throne room – a shockwave of pure glory. But this wasn’t someone else’s glory: this was his and Khenria’s. A homecoming in her arms – again and again as their shuddering lasted a small eternity. As if the ecstasy couldn’t stop, wouldn’t. As if Elohl’s wyrria had opened up something both their hearts had long hammered shut. Dherran’s breath was hard upon the steam as he spilled into her, and Khenria gave it back until she collapsed and Dherran had to haul them both to the edge of the tub so they wouldn’t drown.

  Laying on his chest, she gave a breathless laugh. Dherran returned it, ecstasy still flowing through him as the chalky water moved in little currents around them both. “Gods in every heaven!”

  “You said it.” Dherran cupped her ass, drawing her close again. He was still half-hard and she shuddered from head to heels, crying out as she bit his neck with a laugh.

  “No more! Aeon, I can’t take it!”

  “Whatever milady wishes.” Dherran kissed her forehead. They lay there in the water, breathing softly in the steam as the glow slowly faded, though it wasn’t gone. As if the alchemy between them would never let go. Dherran reached up, smoothing away her wet curls, unable to cease touching her.

  He suddenly realized he was using his damaged hand. Pausing, he turned his wrist over. Where there had been rent tendons and sliced flesh, there was now nothing – only a thin white scar to show that Dherran’s wound had ever been there. Marveling at it, he flexed his hand, making a perfect fist without pain. Then he glanced at Khenria’s stabbed shoulder and saw that she was the same, idling with her eyes closed and her arms up around his neck like she’d never been hurt.

  “Aeon and all the gods!” Dherran breathed.

  “Hmm?” Khenria opened sleepy eyes, glancing up at him. He nodded to her shoulder. She looked over, her grey eyes widening, then snapping to his wrist. Shifting up in the water, she seized his arm, inspecting it, then looking at him.

  “It’s not even scarred!”

  As Dherran looked again, he saw the white scar was also gone – as if brushed from his skin like a tide through ocean sand. They both sat there, staring at it, Khenria also glancing over to poke at the healed flesh on her shoulder.

  “Dherran...” She looked up again. “Was that you, or me?”

  “I don’t even know,” he breathed, astounded, smoothing fingers over her healed shoulder. “After everything I felt in that throne hall today, Khen – I just don’t know.”

  “Maybe both of us.” Khenria shivered, her gaze going long. “My wyrria unbound today, Dherran. It’s been useless, just a trapped rage inside me all these years, ever since I escaped my torturers when I was young. But today – today it came alive, when the golden marks upon your friend’s skin called. They fed me, flamed me. Fired me...”

  With a deep inhalation, Dherran sat up, winding her close in his arms. She shuddered, and even in his ecstasy and amazement at everything that had happened, a slow fear gripped Dherran’s gut. If Elohl’s power could give this gift of connection, of awakening latent wyrria in people, of strange healing despite fighting and war – could he take it away? Dherran kissed Khenria’s forehead, wrapping her closer in his arms.

  “We should get dressed,” she breathed against his neck. “My birth-mother just asserted herself the new Vhinesse. I should probably be at a conference where I might be considered—” Khenria’s voice quit with a deep inhalation.

  “A crown princess of Valenghia?” Dherran murmured. “Fuck them. Let it wait. All I care about is right here, right now. And I will let no man take that from me. Ever.”

  Dherran smoothed a hand over Khenria’s back and she cuddled closer. Wrapping her arms around him in the slick water, she rested her cheek on his collarbones. “I’ll never leave you, Dherran. I hope you know that. Ever since we met, the only man I’ve wanted is you. Even—”

  “I know.” He found her lips with his. “You don’t have to say it.”

  “You know?”

  “I knew,” he kissed her, “from the moment we met at the river. I saw it there in your eyes. Just as I’ve seen it every day since. Because it’s the same thing I feel. Always.”

  “Always.” Khenria breathed to him, fervent.

  Passion poured through Dherran as he kissed her long and deep, in an endless moment that defied thrones and death and time.

  CHAPTER 25 – JHERRICK

  Jherrick sat before the seven archways in his quilted silk robe, listen
ing to them breathe. Absorbed in the World Shaper’s song as the dawn rose, he could feel the vibrations of music like currents through a vast ocean – liquid, unfathomable. Jherrick had been instructed by Flavian to sit here and listen, day and night, for the past week. And now, the sensation swamped Jherrick, filling him until nothing existed but awe. Swirling in through his crown and every pore of his skin, music of impossible harmony devoured him, illuminating places that seemed dark and endless. Crushing, it towed him under, made him feel like air was thicker than tar, until it would ease away, allowing his lungs to take a breath.

  But there was darkness, too, that crept in when he lost focus. A jangle of disharmony that suddenly pulled him. A dead boy’s glassy eyes rose before Jherrick, red as blood as he watched mist reflect off the seven archways in the luminous dawn. Shaking himself out of his reverie, Jherrick pushed back the cacophony and those eyes that tore him away from the beauty of the universe. With a sigh, he claimed a pitcher of water from the stones before him and drank.

  Rubbing water over his face, he flicked it from his short blonde beard, his focus gone. Exhausted from his vigil, Jherrick’s mind turned. Rising, he stood from his meditative seat and moved toward the egress from the cloverleaf plaza. His mind was lost as he ascended a succession of stairs and crossed bridges arching high over the morning-golden citadel. Descending, he found himself stepping into the Memorarium with its lofty columns, rectangular pool, and agate-stone bier.

  Jherrick’s gaze roved over Aldris’ corpse as he approached, golden and red leaves shivering down as a morning breeze swept through the archways and colonnades. An urge seared within him and Jherrick’s fingers twitched; wanting to use his wyrria, compelling his hands. He could almost taste Aldris’ energy lingering among the colonnades and twisting maples, like iron upon his tongue. What Noldra Ethirae had told him was true. Aldris wasn’t entirely dead, the sensation of tigers and hot-tempered smelting wafting through the open space. But as much as Jherrick could sense Aldris, it was maddening to feel so little of him. Like it was only an echo of what Aldris had been.

  A step came behind Jherrick, a slither of silk over stone. Jherrick turned to see Noldrones Flavian approaching. Worry smote Jherrick, that he had been caught at Aldris’ tomb, which had been forbidden until he had better control over his awakening wyrria. But Flavian seemed to be in a joyful mood, a smile upon his face rather than reproach. One hand was lifted, and Jherrick could see a tiny red finch perched upon the Herald’s finger. It sang a trilling song as they approached, the sound lifting Jherrick’s heart as the Albrennus stepped up beside Jherrick.

  “What is this?” Jherrick asked, his mood lifting at the presence of the tiny red finch, stripes of cheery yellow under its neck and belly. As he raised a hand to touch it, the bird fluttered over to Jherrick’s knuckles. It dug tiny talons in, ruffled its feathers and began to trill again, its throat vibrating with rapid pulses that echoed through the agate-stone dome. Jherrick gave a startled laugh, feeling brighter than he had in ages as a warming wind passed through the space. The finch cocked its head, eyeing him, then gave a laughing trill back like a mynah.

  Flavian let out a rolling chuckle. He extended a finger and the finch let itself be petted under the throat like a tabby cat. “They’re called aurus excelsianni, the soul-excelsior. It is said their song can call a man into joy so powerful that lifelong enemies become friends. I keep some in the citadel. They do wonders for lifting the heart.”

  “Indeed.” Jherrick laughed as the tiny bird scratched its neck with one foot. “Is this for me?”

  “It is.” Flavian smiled, benevolent and mysterious. “He is very tame – treat him well and he will follow you everywhere. Every louve wyrdani, every Dusk Warrior, needs an instrument to train in feeling the soul-spark of a living creature. The soul-excelsior is the perfect instrument to practice on. Their vibrations coalesce around their being, and their souls are very present. Today, we will learn how to sense a soul in the Void – starting with your new friend here.”

  Jherrick laughed as the tiny finch hopped across his knuckles. It went to a more manageable perch upon his index finger, then fluffed up, its tiny stick legs disappearing beneath all that cherry-red down. As Jherrick watched, it shat, a tiny splat of white hitting the stones, then resumed its vociferous chirruping.

  “Let us begin,” Flavian intoned in a mystic baritone. “Close your eyes, Noldrones Jherrick. Feel the bird upon your finger. Feel the weight of it, the texture of talon and feather and the vibration of its heart. Feel what it is that makes this creature buoyant, that makes your ears happy to hear it, your heart happy to be near it. And when you understand these elements, open up and feel them in the Void.”

  Jherrick did as he was instructed, feeling the sweet presence of the finch. And when he had that happy nature solidly in his heart, he opened up, sensing the Void. Seeing it around him, vivid even through his closed eyelids. He saw the swirl of the finch’s energy at once – a compact, cozy, yellow-white vortex upon his finger. Joy from that little swirl eased through his own body, Jherrick realized. As the finch continued its trilling laughter, its buttercup presence seeped into Jherrick’s energy in the Void. He suddenly became aware of his own nature in the Void – tortuous, black and red with a violet halo, thick with tendrils of darkness that writhed through his being.

  Jherrick gasped, as his eyes blinked open. “I see myself! My energy – it’s dark.”

  “Indeed.” Flavian extended his hand and the finch cocked his head, but did not leave Jherrick’s finger. Flavian’s endless eyes were reassuring as he smiled at Jherrick. “And yet, the soul-excelsior has chosen to be your companion. They do not choose those they dislike. Nor does the essence of joy befriend the truly dark.”

  Jherrick gazed down at the little bird. It looked up at him, trilled, then hunkered, closing its eyes as if drifting off to sleep. “Why me?”

  “Because there is much good in you,” Flavian murmured. “Despite the wyrria you carry.”

  Letting his concentration in the Void drift, Jherrick saw again the enormous presence standing firm just behind him in the starlit darkness. It was always there, he’d found – a part of him, limned in light, but something he didn’t know yet how to truly access. “But I’ve let good people get killed. Because I followed a dark path.”

  “One always has a choice,” Flavian murmured, “to be a better man.”

  “Olea told me something like that once.” Jherrick laughed sadly.

  “So can you be,” Flavian intoned. “I feel your soul aching for such goodness to fill you, Noldrones Jherrick. It needs only a path.”

  “But my wyrria is evil, just like Trevius Stranik’s was,” Jherrick breathed, fear wisping through him. “It can raise the dead. And kill.”

  “Understanding death is not darkness,” Flavian returned, his face peaceful. “Death is often a mercy, Jherrick. Rest your mind upon Archaeon, upon his ruination and damning immortality. Would he choose death if he could, do you think?”

  “Yes.” Jherrick’s answer came without hesitation. “The wounds he was dealt from this Key of Fire – they consume him. It’s a wonder he hasn’t gone mad.”

  “He may yet.” Flavian’s tone was subdued. “He spends most of his eons in stasis, like we have done for your friend Aldris here. The damage to his physical vessel is so great that he is only able to remain within it for a few hours at a time. It is only with great difficulty that I can contact him when his mind strays through the Void during periods of stasis. But practice your wyrria, and you will also be able to find someone across that great expanse.”

  Jherrick glanced at Aldris’ corpse. “I could actually contact Aldris or Olea, out there?”

  A mysterious smile lifted Flavian’s lips. “How did you find the soul-excelsior’s energy in the Void just now, Noldrones Jherrick?”

  “I focused on the feel of it, the emotions it raised in me,” Jherrick answered. “And then opened to the Void to feel for the same pattern there.”

&nb
sp; “Precisely. It is through our imprinting with another soul,” Flavian intoned, “that we are able to find them once they are dead. From their personality still memorialized within you – which you can follow to where the dead linger and call them back. If they are willing to return.”

  “The finch,” Jherrick mused. “I saw yellow light easing into me from its essence in the Void.”

  “Yes,” Flavian nodded. “The soul-excelsior is very bright and giving, which is why it tries to become one with you. Such creatures give naturally; they do not understand any other way. Find that sensation – of how it felt to be given that joy, that trilling song, the clutch of tiny talons upon your finger. And then you will find the soul in the Void.”

  Fast as thought, Flavian’s hand snaked out. Seizing the little bird in a loose fist, he pinched its beak and tiny nostrils shut. The bird panicked, fluttering in Flavian’s fist, struggling to breathe. Jherrick cried out, his hand shooting to Flavian’s to get the Albrennus to release the bird. But Flavian gave a sudden explosion of power from his body, and a whip of manifested wings bowled Jherrick to his back upon the agate-stone. Before Jherrick could recover, the finch had ceased to struggle in Flavian’s hand.

  And when the Albrennus opened his fist, the bird lay upon his palm, dead.

  “What have you done?!” Jherrick cried out, rounding upon Noldrones Flavian in rage.

  “Calm your emotions.” Flavian’s tone was commanding and suffered no argument. Jherrick breathed himself to restraint, but his heart thundered and his breath was tight, wretched. Flavian made a settling motion, and as the Herald came to his knees upon the agate-stone floor, Jherrick did the same. Placing the dead bird down upon the floor, Flavian gestured to Jherrick.

  “Close your eyes. Open your senses to the Great Void, and find the soul-excelsior, Noldrones Jherrick. Bring it back. Now.”