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

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  Jherrick saw his Captain-General frown, narrowing her eyes upon the stout fellow at the fountain. He wondered if she knew the man. As Jherrick watched, the man's dark gaze flicked to Olea. He nodded once. It was a small movement, nearly imperceptible, but it filled Jherrick with a strange electricity.

  Here was a piece of mystery.

  Lounging casually at the fountain, the man put his palm to his chest, and his other hand dropped to his side, where a sword should have hung. He nodded again. A thrill passed through Jherrick. He saw Olea go very still. She gazed at the man another moment, as he settled back into his casual pose upon the lip of the fountain, staring off at nothing.

  Jherrick knew the man was waiting for Olea. He'd performed the Kingsmen salute, plain as porridge. Something chill passed through Jherrick. Something clenched within him, thinking about reporting this to Castellan Lhaurent, his Lothren representative. He should report it. That’s what he’d been charged by the Lothren to do, bring back news of any oddities concerning Olea den’Alrahel.

  But the dead boy’s face suddenly rose in Jherrick’s mind. Countless innocent faces replaced it, shuffling through like a deck of cards, bodies he had disposed of for Lhaurent. The Castellan was Jherrick's only touchstone within the Khehemni Lothren, as per the rules of hierarchy and secrecy within the organization, though he was aware of one other true Lothren member in the palace. Should he report this to someone else? What would Lhaurent do if he found he’d been side-stepped? Olea was a Kingsman. An Alrashemni. The enemy. She was of the clan who had killed Jherrick’s family.

  But how many bodies had she asked Jherrick to dispose of?

  Not a single one.

  Jherrick slipped back into the dustmote-lit reaches of the Guardhouse before Olea could march up the steps. His mind was churning, his muscles clenched in thought as her bootfalls slapped stone. Each one caused a small thrill through Jherrick. She was an inspiring woman, and to be so close, so much of the day… But he had to report it. When she finally shucked her baldric with a loud clatter at her scroll-strewn desk next to his, he had gotten composure of himself enough to look around.

  His captain flopped into her wooden chair, boots up on her desk atop the pile of papers. She made an exasperated grumble, currying her elegant hands through her long tumble of blue-black curls, mussing it like she'd just been fucked.

  “Aeon-damned bigots,” she sighed.

  “I'm sorry?”

  Jherrick played his regular affable, mousey alter ego as he turned from the stacks of tomes that chronicled supplies ordered and inventory costs. It was a ruse he was comfortable with, this bumbling, uncertain, weak-bodied personality. But Jherrick’s mind was sharp enough to work at the ledgers and lists, and that was no ruse. One of the reasons he was fit to maintain this post, both for the Lothren and for the Crown. Jherrick paused with an open tome near his nose, blinking owlishly as if he couldn’t read the text, because he'd neglected to grab his sham spectacles from his desk before his captain had entered the room.

  Olea grinned at him. She swung her boots off her desk and rose, fetching Jherrick's wire-framed spectacles from his desktop. “Here. Don't ruin your bloody eyes. They're bad enough.”

  She tossed the spectacles to him in a nice, slow arc. The kind of thing any lad of seven could catch. Jherrick fumbled the catch, dropping his tome with a thick slap of leather hitting stone, and bobbling the spectacles too. They fell to the stone with a clatter.

  “Sorry...” He mumbled his words, allowing a scarlet blush to flame his cheeks as he hastily bent to retrieve both spectacles and tome, awkward.

  Olea moved to him with a laugh, clapping him on the shoulder. “My fault. I should know better than to throw things at you. What have we got to do this evening, Jherrick?”

  “The lists of the next batch of volunteers from all over Alrou-Mendera have come in.” Jherrick stepped into his usual ruse with fluid ease. Years of practice had given him an easy familiarity with Olea. One that he realized suddenly, was no longer feigned. “Plenty of families want to send starving children into the Palace Guard this year, Captain.”

  Olea's smile turned into a grimace. “How many?”

  “So far? One thousand and sixteen. And the consideration deadline is still two weeks away.”

  He watched Olea's lovely face sadden, her full, merry lips fall. “So many. Aeon! I could use the men on the walls, but we can't take even a hundred of those. Not with the rations we’ve got. This war... everything's going to the Valenghian front. Every bushel of wheat. Every barrel of pears.”

  “No one wants to send their sons to war, but all of them need the coin, Captain. The Palace Guard are the only faction not slated for border-holding against Valenghia or anywhere else. And we get three squares, plus extra coin to send home.”

  Olea nodded, her bright demeanor covered in a thoughtful shroud. She heaved a sigh, then settled to her desk, boots up on a nearby footstool rather than her usual. She crossed her slender arms beneath her lovely breasts, a soft scowl upon her features.

  “Read us the lists, Jherrick. We'll sort through those thousand and see if we can't find any with promise before they make a long trip here for the physical trials. I'll not have starving families spending more coin to get their sons to the capitol if we can't take them. Even if it takes all night, we'll make a decision on them before morning and start drafting the proper refusal documents.”

  Jherrick moved to his own desk, fetching the thick vellum sheaves with the names and skills he had tabulated. He remembered to put on the spectacles he didn't need, then glanced over them at his Guard-Captain. She was gazing out the door into the wilting light of early dusk, arms crossed. Dustmotes swirled through the air, haloing her curls in a sliver of sunlight, making her hair shine like good obsidian. She mussed it absently. Jherrick's body tightened for her. He had the errant thought that if she ever pulled a blade on him, he might just take a sword in the gut to hold her. He pushed it away. He would report her movements. It was his duty. A duty he’d taken an oath to uphold. An oath inked in blood to the Khehemni Lothren.

  “First candidate,” he read from the vellum, peering through his spectacles. “Otis Altshi of North Cathrae. Aged seventeen. Ploughman, leather-binder, woodsman...”

  CHAPTER 8 – ELOHL

  Elohl and the innkeeper had scoured the pots and fetched dry laundry from the line. In a stretching silence they had folded it all, then sat once more in the kitchen, at the rough wooden table. Eleshen had served him winterberry and rosemary tea with a bit of honey, and its rare sweetness gradually began to thaw Elohl's chill demeanor from her pressing inquiries.

  He hadn't meant to be so harsh with her. Captaining men upon the glaciers was all he knew of life now. But battle was now behind, and the warmth of a good woman beckoned. And when she slipped her fingers across the table, to touch his in apology, her pale green eyes smooth as good jade, Elohl paused only long enough to drain his tea.

  Standing and moving around the table, he watched her rise from her bench with need tight in her body. They met slowly at first, her touch tentative, apologetic as she reached up to touch his jaw. Questions still roiled upon her lovely face, but they became drowned beneath ardor as Elohl pinned her close around the waist with one arm. Her cheeks flushed crimson; he heard her take a little gasp of breath. Sliding a hand beneath her hair he gripped her nape, an animal tension between them now. It tingled through Elohl’s senses, telling him to take, wanting him to break through the ice.

  His lips fell open, feeling too much, feeling it all surface in his throat, an agony of heat and need. Eleshen held back, watching him. Daring him. Damnable little woman. And with a growl of frustration, Elohl gripped her neck hard and pressed her into his lips. Heat rioted through him with that kiss. Boiling, bitter, needful heat surged up his throat, poured into his mouth, flamed every nerve. It was hard and it was good and Elohl didn’t care. When blue eyes surfaced in his vision, he pushed them away. In a rush of need, Elohl scooped Eleshen up, carrying her i
n silence to the back bedroom.

  It had been fast, a deed of forge-hot fury. But when it was done, they’d taken comfort in each other, languid kisses, the delight of suckling skin. And now the darkness was deep, chill with a night breeze off the glaciers. Eleshen had lit a candle when their lovemaking was finished, then snuggled into Elohl’s warm protection, curling up against his right side, his arm around her shoulders. Dozing in the hush of the spring night, Elohl languished in dreams, a deep blue lake behind his eyelids. On his back with his left arm up beneath his pillow, the tips of his fingers barely touched the longknife hidden there. Cold steel filled his dream, the depths of the lake’s water numbing. He was submerged deep, every nerve deadened, chilled. But as he languished, something began to wake, to heat, his senses turning hot like the lake’s cauldron had begun to boil.

  Elohl’s body twitched, his hand clamping down on the hilt of the knife.

  And suddenly, with lids still closed, he came fully awake, aware of something else in the room. Someone else. No board had creaked beneath an ill-placed footstep, no breath had disturbed the hollows of the room beyond the candle, and yet as he cradled Eleshen, he felt someone watching from the shadows.

  Feigning sleep, Elohl allowed his body intimate relaxation, smoothing every muscle as if he yet slept. His breath was smooth and deep, his body ostensibly still dead to the world. And yet, every nerve was awake, on fire, his tingling sphere of sensation thrown wide. He didn't need to watch the room with his sight. He could feel the fellow just there, to his left in the dark shadows near the open door. Candlelight flickered across his lids as a breath of air disturbed it, drafting out to the chill spring night. Peeper frogs chorused in the snowmelt darkness outside.

  He felt the man's presence intensify. Coiled readiness. A tension of violence about to erupt. Elohl's fingers tightened around his longknife hilt.

  Suddenly, his neck tingled. A vision lit his mind, Eleshen slashed, bleeding out, Elohl with a knife through the neck. The man came at him from the shadows in that moment, a stab at the side of the neck, to take his spine and jugular by the full width of the blade. Faster than thought, Elohl rolled to the right over Eleshen, perfectly timed. Protecting her, he thrust back with the longknife in his left hand as the intruder’s stab missed.

  Elohl’s thrust had met soft resistance, his longknife driven deep into the fellow's stomach behind him, angled up. The man grunted. Elohl’s right hand tingled. Flashing out, it was just in time to seize the man’s other wrist as a second slash came. Without thought, Elohl slammed the fellow’s wrist against the stout bedpost, hard, as he hauled his own blade up with his triceps, gutting the intruder deep. Hot blood poured over Elohl’s hand, his wrist, his bare back. A mortal wound. The man spasmed. Elohl smashed the man’s hand against the bedpost again, and that hand sprung open, one knife clattering away. Whipping his head back hard, he broke the intruder’s nose with a sharp crack. The man fell back with a grunting wheeze, hitting the wall and sliding down to the floor.

  Elohl launched from the bed naked. An animal violence had taken him, his senses on fire with a need to survive, his body taking over as his mind fled to a primal place. Blood and gut-filth slicked him as he pinned the man’s knife-hand beneath his knee, then gripped the man by the face and slammed his head into the floor, again, and again, and again. The man released his second knife. Elohl kicked it away, pinning his own longknife to the fellow's throat. Kneeling in blood and waste, Elohl had him. Filth was leaking fast and thick through the fellow’s fingers as he clutched his ruined abdomen, gasping with pain.

  “Move and you die!” Elohl growled, blade poised to skewer the man through the throat. Some part of him registered that Eleshen was awake, shouting, taking up the candle from the bedside bureau and bristling with a knife of her own.

  “I'm dead anyway.” The man rasped, blood trickling from his mouth as it gushed from his middle, his breath heavy with pain. Elohl's strike had been thorough, up under the margin of the ribs, and deep. Not close enough to pierce the heart, but slicing enough of the lungs and large artery near his spine that the intruder wasn't long for this world.

  “Tell me who sent you.” Elohl growled, longknife poised, kneeling naked on the filth-slick boards.

  The man's coughing chuckle was full of froth. His blue eyes were fading, but they pierced Elohl with fervor in the uncertain candlelight. “Abandon your protector, Kingsman, and this is what you get... more of us...”

  “What do you mean, my protector?! And more of whom?!” Elohl demanded. “Whom do you serve?! Tell me and I'll end you with mercy.”

  “I don't want your mercy, Blackmark.” The assassin gathered blood and saliva, spit with the last of his ebbing strength at Elohl's face. Elohl whipped his face aside and it went flying past. “I want you to suffer...”

  “Tell me who you people are!” Elohl snarled, close, a bestial rage roaring through him.

  A chuckle slipped from the man's lips. His strength was ebbing, the spreading pool upon the floor a lake of shadow-black rouge. Limbs lax, head fallen back, he smiled a grave-ready grin. “Too late, Kingsman. Too thorough. Torture us next time, but the outcome will be the same. We’ll tell you nothing. And still... the Lothren will come for you...”

  With a last bloody gurgle, the man's eyes dimmed, lids falling half-closed. Elohl released him with a growl, slamming the assassin's head back into the floor once more for spite. But the man had no complaints now, and nothing more to tell him.

  Nothing. Just like all the others.

  The quiet in the room roared in Elohl’s ears, a waterfall of thunder in the silent space. Sitting back upon his haunches in the slick warm blood, Elohl could feel nothing but the buzzing of his senses, the grip that tightened his muscles, ready for more fighting. More death. His chin lifted, an animal alertness, his entire body listening for more movement in the night. They’d sent two before, working in tandem, whoever these Lothren were. One to slash and sacrifice; one to try for Elohl’s back. But this time, the dark hall past the open door and the vegetation beyond the window was empty, not even the pressure of a doe’s heartbeat pulsing his ready-tuned sphere.

  Peeper frogs took up their chorus once again outside. Chill air freshened the room from the open window. A shiver took Elohl from head to heels, sloughing away the readiness of his senses. He took a deep breath, the single breath of his training, letting his body shiver the rest off to the night.

  Until, at last, there was true silence.

  Methodically, Elohl hauled the dead man away from the wall by his soft black leather boots. The candle was high in Eleshen's hand as she stood to one side. It trembled, throwing shivering shadows over the walls, over scarlet-black blood. Trying to only see the man before him as dead meat, Elohl began to strip the intruder of his boots, then his hooded assassin's jerkin, then the rest. He was liberating the man of his trousers when Eleshen finally spoke, her voice only minimally breathy.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for a mark.” Elohl shimmied the man's pants off under his muscular hips, bent to his ankles and shucked them off, laying the assassin out bare upon the bloody boards.

  “A mark? An assassin's mark? Has this happened before?” Eleshen breathed.

  “Enough times.” Elohl gestured for her to step forward with the candle, so he could see better. She did, claiming more bravery than he expected, kneeling just outside of the tacky black pool, squinting at the dead man's pale skin.

  “How many times?”

  Elohl saw nothing upon the man's flesh, no mark nor scar other than the regular ones born of battle. Reaching out, he let his fingertips peruse the man's skin instead.

  “What are you doing?” Eleshen breathed at his shoulder.

  Elohl's eyes were closed, fingers sliding over the man's shoulder, his bicep, his arm, then back to his chest. “Searching.”

  “For a mark only your fingers can feel?”

  “Something like that. Something sewn in under the surface, maybe. Some scar th
at doesn't show white.”

  “Have they ever had a mark before?”

  “No.” Elohl had finished with the man's front, even scouring the sensitive bits. Thankful he was naked to do this, Elohl tunneled an arm through the sticky blood beneath the fellow and hauled him over upon his face. Entrails slipped out of the man’s belly, squelched as he rolled. Just an anonymous corpse now with his face down in the blood, it was easier for Elohl to see only dead flesh before him rather than a man. Starting all over, he scoured the fellow's back with his gaze. Eleshen breathed softly at his side, her composure fierce, interested.

  “You've avoided my question.”

  Elohl looked around, to see a bitter humor upon her face in the candlelight. “What?”

  “How many assassins have been sent after you, Kingsman?”

  “I can't be certain how many of them were assassins.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “I've had my life attempted eight times since I entered service in the High Brigade.” Seeing nothing but the usual scars upon the man's broad back, Elohl’s fingers walked over the corpse, up through his hair. “But I managed a kill like this, one of these fellows in black leathers, only thrice.”

  “What about the other attacks?” Eleshen breathed.

  “High Brigade fellows, whipped to anger over a perceived slight. Six came at me, once. Four jumped me in a bar another time. But whether they were roused to violence by their own means or by someone else...”