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

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  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.

  * * *

  Startling awake, Ghrenna came to in a sheen of sour sweat. Limbs flailing, she knocked her wine bottle and threllis-pipe from her bedstand with a crash. The bottle smashed upon the stone floor of the grotto, wine and pottery scattering with a skittering tinkle in the lamplit gloom. The glass blown pipe, fortunately, only bounced, then rolled beneath her four-post bed, deep under the tattered laces and ancient, mildewed sheers of the canopy’s drapes.

  “Aeon's fuck.”

  Ghrenna’s curse was weak, her mouth full of cotton, her head pounding with a five-day ache. Blearily, she leaned over the side of the bed to find her pipe, but doing so raised her pain to a cascading fury. She keened and eased back to the tattered pillows, breathing raggedly in her sweaty silk undershirt.

  A form stirred beside her. Honey-blonde Shara sighed, then blinked at Ghrenna blearily. She turned over, nestling back down into the tattered covers and pulling them up over her mussed golden locks. She was still good and drunk from a scouting party only hours prior. But Ghrenna’s inebriated ease had worn off during her endless nightmares. It went with the headaches. Ghrenna could drink and drink, she could smoke threllis until she was coughing and floating a league above her body upon clouds of pollen fluff, and always, she was sober as sober could get mere hours later.

  And in exquisite pain.

  Ghrenna pulled away the sweat-soaked covers, brushing back her damp white-blonde waves. She tottered to her feet, avoiding shards of broken pottery from the smashed wine bottle. Moving over the arcane white sigils set into the stone floor, she lurched to the tarnished silver washbasin along one edge of the vast byrunstone grotto. She made it just in time. Like clockwork, all the delicacies she had stolen the night before came up in a ragged rush as she vomited into the basin.

  Ghrenna coughed, spat, blew her nose. Lifting the basin, she tossed the contents down the cave-abyss to her left, hearing it splatter on its way down to Aeon-knew-where. Far enough below that she and Shara wouldn’t smell it later. Rinsing her mouth with a cup of water from the pool of seepage near the basin, she spat over the abyss. Drinking slowly, she at last felt her headache roll back to a manageable thrum.

  Her senses clearing, Ghrenna took in the cavern, monitoring for intruders. Silence echoed to a ceiling that could not be seen, despite lamps that burned near the bed and upon the bureau. Lace-filigreed stone extended upwards into the darkness, their curling room dividers like unrolled scrolls. Sigils tattooed the ancient space, the walls, the floor. Arcane glyphs in a languid script set in luminous white metal, they covered every inch of stone. The lacelike dividers melded into the walls, spaced by long-tarnished mirrors that flowed upwards to forgotten heights. Here and there, sigils and writing gathered in inset cupolas of doors. And though Ghrenna and her guildmates had explored the subterranean cavern of rooms beneath Fhouria over and over, they had never been able to disturb those sigil-laden doors, nor pry the precious metals from the wall.

  Something protected this place, indestructible to the ravages of time. And except for tarnish and dust it held firm, like a fortress. All except the entry they’d found in Fhouria’s sewers, a stone door smashed into massive blocks, as if it had burst outward from within, long ago. Each block covered with whorls of blue, a monstrous sigil written through the sundered stone. They’d set the broken entrance with traps and snares, and for the past six years since Ghrenna had seen this place of safety in a vision, this cavern of rooms had been home not just to her but to all of her guildmates.

  And never once had there been any unwelcome intruder.

  She breathed a sigh of ease in her cavern, protected. She didn’t know what the sigils meant, but their magic was something strong, immutable despite the broken door. Silence breathed around her, echoing with Shara’s soft snores. In this safety, Ghrenna thought back over her dream. A dream at first, it had morphed into a vision. Ghrenna remembered that time ten years ago when they had toiled fruitlessly to forestall the traveling-out of their kin to the Summons. That dream had ended with the swordsman who haunted her nightmares.

  But then everything had shifted to a place Ghrenna had never seen. A cottage with an Innship sign, in the mountains on a rough-track road. She'd seen Elohl, older and harder-worn than she had ever seen him before. The storm-grey of his eyes had been grim, and a short black beard had roughened his jaw. To anyone else, his weather-chiseled face would have seemed hard, closed. But Ghrenna knew better. He was in pain. Her heart flooded with an ache that expanded in her chest, pulsing outwards as if it could find him across the distance. Her very soul cried out for him, feeling his despair, just as strong now as it had been ten years ago. Time had not lessened it. Hardship had only made it more keen, more barren.

  The spreading ache in her chest flooded her, and Ghrenna hitched a breath. She could still feel his arms around her. Protecting her. But now they were both alone in the wilds, barely surviving, and still she had never seen any clue in her visions as to where exactly he was. Still, after ten years of dreaming about him, she had no destination, no place she knew to go find him.

  But he had been at ease this time, in the last part of her vision, a woman cradled in his arms. His heart was still barren, still aching, but soothed just a little by kindness. Ghrenna flushed, seeing her vision again, watching them make love upon pine planks drenched in sunshine. She heated, brushing a hand over her sweat-soaked silk, watching Elohl’s iron spar frame take this unknown woman, intense as he had ever been. And when it was over, she saw him standing bare-chested in morning's dappled light, next to a Stone. Beautiful golden Inkings were writ upon his skin, and the little woman was touching them, admiring with her fingertips as if Elohl were hers.

  Ghrenna watched this future, or perhaps this past, and found herself jealous, her ache of love hardening into cold anger. She dashed a hand over her eyes, then doused her face with water, rubbing away sweat.

  “Ghren?” Shara's sleepy murmur startled Ghrenna. She turned from the basin, seeing Shara sit up beyond an edge of filigree in the grand mildewed bed, lit by the low yellow lanterns. Shara gave a long, languid stretch, her beautiful curves the envy of all women.

  “Just a dream, Shara. Go back to bed.” Ghrenna murmured, currying water through her long snow-blonde waves to sluice away sweat.

  “Want to talk about it?” Shara yawned.

  “No.” Ghrenna wandered back to the bed and sat on the edge, rolling out the screaming tension in her neck.

  Shara reached out, brushing a hand down Ghrenna's damp hair. Ghrenna stilled beneath that touch, and her thoughts turned to Elohl. He'd always done that when she'd had visions and their resulting headaches. A soothing touch, Shara'
s concern was that of a sister, a mutual comfort they could always turn to ever since they had defected from the Fleetrunners together.

  When they had run all night, and for three whole days, fleeing the horrors of war.

  “Why don't you tell me?” Shara murmured.

  “It doesn't matter.”

  “It does. Dreams are important, Ghrenna. Tell me what you saw just now.” Ghrenna had still never told Shara that she had true visions, but Shara knew Ghrenna had vivid dreams, strange and often accurate. They’d never precisely discussed it, but after such a long association, Ghrenna was fairly certain Shara knew that she was a seer. Though she’d never told Luc and Gherris, and for that, Ghrenna was grateful.

  “I saw Elohl.” Ghrenna relented at last. She collapsed sideways upon the pillows and drew her feet up onto the bed. Shara scooted close, cuddling Ghrenna's back, stroking her hair.

  “Again?” Shara murmured, her breath soft by Ghrenna's ear. “How was he?”

  “Living. Barely.”

  “How many dreams of him does that make, now?”

  “Too many.” Ghrenna absorbed Shara's petting, her eyelids settling closed.

  “You've not had as many dreams of your other Kingsmen comrades, Olea and Dherran. And still just the one of your little friend, right? What was her name?”

  “Suchinne.” Ghrenna’s throat closed. She saw it again, as she did whenever she was disturbed. Suchinne, on the battlefield, run through the breast by a spear but not dead. Pinned to the bloodsoaked ground and raped by five of their own Menderian soldiers before she died, in agony until the light left her dark eyes. Suchinne, kicked like trash by the last man, furious that the Blackmark bitch had died before he was finished, plunging his sword into her dead body for spite.

  Shara wound her arms tighter around Ghrenna. “Suchinne. May the All-Mother protect our sisters, who fall in battle.”

  They shared a soft silence in the lanternlit darkness. Tears came, weak tears. Ghrenna shuddered. “I dreamed of Elohl released from battle, Shara. Released from the mountains, somewhere. He was with a woman, in a cheery inn. It smelled like pine and rosemary bread…”

  Shara brushed a hand over her hair, smoothing Ghrenna's white locks away from her face. “He's still out there somewhere, Ghren. Waiting for you.”

  “He’s not waiting for me.” Ghrenna choked back her tears, swallowed them down to a place of stillness. Crying would only make her head pound worse, which would make her smoke more threllis, which would cost more, which meant she had to thieve more. Which meant more lives got risked, which was something Ghrenna wouldn’t tolerate. It wasn’t practical to let her emotions run away with her.

  Her attention strayed to the fat thieving-purse from a week ago at Emry's mansion, her cut of the profits casually tossed upon her ornate gilded bureau by the mirrored cavern wall. Slipping from Shara's arms, she rose, padding quietly to the bureau, her fingers playing out over the soft deer-leather purse. She dumped it out, ill-gotten spoils clattering upon the bureau’s top. A number of pieces of jewelry, a hefty sum of gold and banking notes. Ghrenna ran her fingers over a gilded amulet worked with a snarling wolf. She picked it up, scrutinizing it by the thin yellow lamplight. The wolf wasn’t the same as the one in her vision, the one on the ruby ring Elohl should have found in that niche.

  Her seeing had been wrong ten years ago. The only one that had ever been wrong. The most important one, that should have been right. Elohl’s weathered face filled her vision. Ghrenna’s throat closed. She pushed the emotion back down to stillness.

  “What is it?” Shara murmured from the bed.

  “Nothing.” Ghrenna turned towards a gilt-worked teak table at the far end of the grotto.

  “Something for the collection?” Shara's voice held a mild amusement.

  “Just an oddity.” Padding over to the teak table in her bare feet, Ghrenna added the wolf amulet to her collection in a wide basket upon the bureau. Her fingers roved the eighty some-odd pieces in the basket with disappointment. Jewelry depicting a dragon, or a wolf, none were the same as that ruby ring. Fine-wrought sundials in layered metals cluttered the basket also. Some with wound gear-mechanisms to keep the time, pieces from the Glockenzart of Praough worked by specialty jewelers, costly items. Mostly one just saw crude gears used in trebuchets or mill-wheels in Alrou-Mendera. These miniscule contraptions the Praoughians prided themselves on, with their cleverness of metalwork.

  And yet, none of these pieces looked even remotely similar to the clockworks Elohl had found all those years ago. None were of the same caliber, the same intricacy and delicacy, nor made with such fine precision. That piece had been like this cavern, its true nature filled with a magic lost to time. Ghrenna had felt it, when she had touched the scattered gears in Elohl’s belt-purse, right after he and Olea had stumbled through the Alranstone. A tingle in her mind, of secrets.

  Secrets they might never know, now. Secrets that were too late to uncover.

  Ghrenna traced the wolf medallion in the basket with one finger. She turned from the teak table, padding back to the bed.

  CHAPTER 11 – ELOHL

  Elohl had stayed for over a week at the inn. Eleshen, with her feisty ways and perpetual humor had charmed him, the first sweetness he had truly enjoyed for over ten years. She had put him to work in various tasks, letting him take comfort in the regular work of innship. Days had passed of a small, comfortable life. Scrubbing laundry, hanging it up to dry. Chopping firewood. Thatching the roof of the small barn out back. With the routine had come a kind of peacefulness for Elohl, his days mellow and mild for the first time in ten years.

  But restlessness had grown within him during his stay. A tingling sensation in his skin, an awareness of things left unfinished that made him lose all stillness, shifting with a subtle irritation in his tasks. Until finally, it was overwhelming. Elohl had blinked wide awake with the dawn this day, knowing his peace could not be found here, no matter how serene this placid life could be.

  “You can’t come with me,” Elohl growled for what felt like the hundredth time this morning.

  “Like Halsos I can’t,” Eleshen growled back, tossing her blonde braid defiantly, planted with legs apart right in the middle of the doorway. The frustrating little woman had packed some clothes and an overabundance of food the moment she saw Elohl making his own preparations to leave. And now she was standing in front of the door wearing men’s breeches and laced leather bodice, arms crossed and scowling, her petite, curvaceous form quite effectively barring his way to the road.

  “It’s dangerous in Lintesh.” Elohl tried again. “I’m a marked man. You can’t come.”

  Eleshen waved one hand dismissively. “It’s dangerous here. Your enemies, whoever they are, followed you. So like it or not, I’m already a target, Elohl. I’m safer with you.”

  Elohl couldn’t lift a hand to forcibly move her from the doorway, even though irritation had risen hot within him. With a low growl, he turned, marching for the door to the back porch instead. Like a barbed dart, Eleshen scurried around him, chucking her pack in his way and thrusting her arms out ahead of him, so that he nearly bowled her over. And clumsy as she was, managed to trip over her own boots and fall into his arms.

  Which he was starting to believe wasn’t entirely a lack of coordination.

  But once Eleshen was near, Elohl caught her scent, all spice and lavender, and his frustration made it even more alluring. He meant to push her away. He meant to tell her to move, but he found himself shucking his pack to the floor. He drew her close with a growl, and then she was on her tiptoes, kissing him hard. Elohl wrapped his arms about her little waist, crushing her close, one hand stealing up to hold her by the nape of the neck as his lips strayed beneath her ear. Eleshen moaned, then pulled back and slapped his face.

  “No!” She huffed, her cheeks hot and pale green eyes wrathful. “You don’t get to leave like that! Go now, or stay and make love to me. But you can’t have both.”

  Fire twisted Elohl’
s gut, hot iron. He pulled away and glowered at her.

  “Go ahead,” Eleshen whispered fiercely, “Hit me. I’m a frustrating woman and I always have been and I know it. But you need a frustrating woman in your life, to keep you alive.”

  Elohl’s arms dropped from her like he’d been burned by firebrands. Her words had been meant to sting, and sting they did, far too much like Ihbram den’Sennia’s. Elohl had been living like a dead man for ten years, his glacial calm a replacement for true feeling. And now that he had finally begun to thaw, emotions roiled, unpredictable and wild. And Eleshen baited that raw part of him, that thawed part, sinking her spice and temper into his ice and cracking it wide.

  “You’re foolish,” Elohl growled. “You’ll be killed. Move aside and let me go alone.”

  Eleshen planted her fists on her hips. “Make me.”

  And then Elohl did something he hadn’t ever done before. Like a calloused cur, he put out one sinewed hand and seized her wrist, hauling her out of the way. He’d never handled a woman this way, but it was the only thing that would make sense to her stubborn temper. The only thing that could keep her safe, away from the plague of death that followed him.

  Eleshen sprawled with a squeak of astonishment, falling across a side-table as Elohl walked on, banging out the door and tromping down the back porch. Rounding the side of the inn from the backyard, he marched without looking back, his weatherworn boots sending up puffs of dust on the sun-dry road, though the thawing part of his heart clawed at him for doing so.

  But he’d not gone fifty paces before his expanded senses felt someone following. A scuff of dainty boots here, a sigh carried upon the breeze, the faint scent of spice. He walked on a few hundred paces without looking back, seeing if she would stop. It was a vain hope. She wouldn’t be deterred, whisking solidly on in his wake. At last, Elohl closed his eyes, taking the single long breath of his training and letting it out. He stopped and turned, eyeing Eleshen in his best forbidding manner.