“What?” She quipped peevishly, pursing her lips.
“You.” It was all Elohl could get out, and said everything he needed it to.
“Me?” She argued back, feisty. “What about you? You’re the one going the wrong way.”
He pointed down the road to the south. “I came that way ten years ago from Alrashesh, and I remember it like a nightmare. Go back to the inn, Eleshen.”
She didn’t budge, smirking like she had all the apples in the world stuffed in her blouse. “That’s the way to Lintesh for any normal person. But the way to Lintesh for a Kingsman is that way.” She pointed, some distance up the mountain to his right.
“No more games woman.” Elohl hefted his pack higher on his shoulders, turned, and marched on.
“I’m not playing, you great idiot!” She shouted. Elohl heard her struggling to run beneath the weight of her pack, huffing to catch up with him. Slowing his walk, as if she pulled strings that went directly to his heart, he sighed and turned.
“There’s no shortcut to Lintesh through the mountains.”
“Not for regular people.” Her eyes glittered, almost merry. “Only for Kingsmen.”
“An Alranstone?” He nodded up the mountainside, understanding filling him. “There’s one up there?”
Her smirk grew wider. “Perhaps. But you’ll have to let me come with you. Traveling by byrunstone would save you the time you lost dallying with me.”
Elohl stilled, remembering that last time he had journeyed in such a fashion. A wrenching sensation filled him, a twisting grip in his guts and limbs as if some great beast had seized him, trying to rip him apart. A grotesque rush and pressure like being drowned and threaded through a needle all at once. The thunderclap in his ears. All of it came rushing back, along with the searing heat in his throat, remembering his failure all those years ago. Of returning empty-handed, to an empty Alrashesh.
“No.” Elohl murmured softly to the dust and breeze.
“Why not?” Eleshen’s pretty heart-shaped face was surprised.
“It won’t work for me.”
“But you’re a Kingsman! Tales say that Kingsmen can travel by Alranstone any time they please!”
“The old tales are misleading.”
“Well,” Eleshen scuffed the heel of one boot through the dirt. “You could at least try it. It’s a half-day’s hike from here, up in a small valley just over that rise. There’s a bunch of tumbled ruins, a settlement. There’s a Stone in the middle of it all. We won’t be set back but a day if it doesn’t work.”
“Unmarked can’t travel by Alranstone. It will leave you behind if I go that way.” Elohl gazed up the sharp ridge, searching for a spot level enough to indicate an old road.
Eleshen pursed her lips. “That’s crap. I’ve heard they work for Kingskinder. They’re Unmarked.”
Elohl fixed her with his best glower. Eleshen pursed her lips more, like she’d eaten a sour grape. He put his bristling commander’s demeanor behind his posture, staring her down. She fiddled with her braid but didn’t look away, chin elevating like a defiant horse.
Elohl sighed, then gestured towards the ridge. “Fine. But if you get left behind by the Stone, leave it be. Don’t come following me all the way to Lintesh. It wouldn’t be safe for you to travel alone.”
“Any safer than it is for me to keep an inn alone?” Her eyebrows quirked. She smirked, then turned on her heel, marching down the road to the south.
Elohl hitched his pack higher upon his shoulders with a torpid sigh, then picked up his feet, trailing in her dust. Not half an hour later of mutual stubborn silence, they spied an offshoot from the road, little more than a deer-track sprouting off to the west through the ditch. But the levelness of the ground where the track went suggested ancient stones beneath all the verge, and as Elohl stepped from the road to scuff his boot down through a hummock of moss, he found flat flagstone beneath, almost a handspan down beneath the tilth. Squatting, he brushed mud and moss from the stone’s surface, noting how flat and even it was.
“This was a road, once. Well-traveled and fortified. Men don’t put this much effort into just any thoroughfare.”
Eleshen squatted next to him. “My father and I used to take this track up to the ruins. We discovered the trail shortly after we arrived. A fisherman mentioned it when he was passing through. Most of the local hunters and trappers know it, though people don’t really come here.”
Elohl gazed up the side of the ridge, the track winding upwards, switching back at long intervals just like a well-planned road would have. “But they do know about it?”
She nodded. “Yes, local legend says it was a keep, a stronghold. When we get there, you’ll see, the stones in the main foundation are massive. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been a fortress. But it’s all fallen. It looks like it was badly sieged. Father and I found blocks of stone that we think came from the towers nearly a league down.”
“Probably just ripped downstream by snowmelt,” Elohl commented. “I've seen massive boulders taken some distance in the mountains by spring floods.”
Eleshen straightened, gazing back along the main road to the north. She shaded her eyes, squinting. Elohl rose from his crouch, glancing also. To see a lone man walking the road in the midday sunshine. His bearing was erect and his stature fit, and as Elohl squinted, he could make out the shape of a pack upon the man's shoulders, and the cut of his jerkin and trousers spoke of the military. High Brigade, in fact. And as the man drew nearer, Elohl could make out the lively features and shock of pale blonde hair that was Jovial den'Fourth, one of his own climbing team.
“Trouble?” Eleshen whispered at his side.
“No.” Elohl shook his head, puzzled and unsure what to make of it. “One of my former men. But what he's doing coming this way I can't rightly fathom. He's not due to be discharged for two more years yet.”
“Maybe he's come to find you? Maybe the Brigade needs you back? Maybe there was a mistake with your discharge?”
Elohl cocked his head, dark brows furrowing. All of those reasons seemed logical, and yet. Something restive within him stirred, like a mongrel dog prowling around an uncommon scent. “Arlus den'Pell gave me a formal dismissal himself. There was no mistake. Unless there's been a tremendous attack over the passes from Valenghia... but then they would have sent a rider after me. Stay behind me. I don't expect trouble from Jovial, but he’s… lecherous.”
Eleshen blinked up at him. “What a gentleman. Or would you simply be jealous if he tries to kiss me?”
“Just stay behind me.” Elohl growled. She did.
Jovial was another minute approaching, hailing Elohl with a wave and a relieved smile upon his flawlessly-sculpted face, his blue eyes bright over his high cheekbones. “Lieutenant den'Alrahel!” He called. “Thanks be to Aeon! You've no idea how much of an ordeal it's been, getting even one man through to you!”
“Jovial!” Elohl took a few steps forward, closing the gap as his man drew close. “What's the matter? I was discharged with everything in order. Is there trouble in the passes?”
“Trouble for sure, that needs addressing, sir.” Jovial drew near, just a pace away now, slinging his pack to the dust of the road with a relieved groan, then moving forward with arm proffered in greeting. Elohl stepped forward, reaching out to clasp Jovial's arm.
When suddenly, his entire right side tingled. The muscles twisted so badly that Elohl stumbled sideways, his hand spasming past his subordinate's grip. Shock flooded Jovial's face for a moment, at Elohl’s stumble. Elohl's own surprise at his body's reaction rushed through him.
But then he saw the knife.
Poised to take his kidneys, the short shank would have been thrust in from behind the moment they clasped arms in greeting. Eleshen's shriek confirmed what Elohl's body had already known. Jovial recovered, a snarl twisting his handsome features as he spun in, knife jabbing and swiping. A trained fighter, far better than any simple Brigadier, the man was a surge of mad intent. Shock flo
oding him, his senses on fire with tingling, Elohl recovered his equilibrium, blocking like wildfire. Slipping Jovial’s thrusts, he managed to get both hands to the longknives at his belt, protecting Eleshen with a growl upon his lips.
“Assassin!” He snarled, ready with his own blades at last.
“Don't you know me, Elohl?” Jovial's merry eyes were hard chips of blue as he threw down the short knife and pulled his own longknives. “Just one loyal Brigadier, come to collect his commander. Or rather, your body. There are some who would pay well to see evidence of your demise.”
“Tell me who you are!” Elohl roared.
“Why, I'm Jovial den'Fourth! And to you, that is all I will ever be.”
Jovial lunged; they clashed. Muscles strained in a clinch for a moment. Their breath was hot face to face as they struggled. Suddenly, Jovial slipped out, taking a nasty cut on his shoulder to do it. They began to fight close, slipping and swiping. It was fast; deadly. Though Elohl’s senses spared him anything deep, he already had a number of slashes in the first moments of the fight, shallow cuts above his thick leather bracers, his shirtsleeves shredded and nicks on his neck. Jovial was the same, his knives flashing. Elohl went silent, entering a space of uncaring precision. A cut swiped at his windpipe. Elohl blocked with a forearm and it went shallow. Lancing in, his knife dove for Jovial’s jugular. The man slipped sideways but Elohl’s blade left a decent gash. Compacting, Jovial drove a set of fast swipes at Elohl’s groin. Twisting, the swipes hit Elohl’s outer hips, scoring his belt and leathers. Elohl lunged, upsetting the assassin’s balance, swiping to scissor-gut him. Pivoting, Jovial kept his belly whole as his blade dove at Elohl’s flank.
Slippery with non-lethal cuts, both men’s white shirts seeped red in a number of places. Breathing hard, a musk-thick sweat rose from them, evaporating into the morning sunshine. The iron tang of blood flowing filled the air. But Jovial had been on Elohl’s team eight years. And there had been that time, high on a climb over Selten Pass, when an icicle had broken off and taken the man in the side of his left eye. Elohl took that advantage now with icy precision, slipping past, deep into Jovial's blind left side. The man was fast, but not fast enough. Elohl took a bad swipe across his upper chest to get in and slice Jovial’s forehead. Blood poured into Jovial’s eyes. He roared in fury. Blind, he blocked too low when Elohl dug the knife at his ribs, thinking Elohl meant to shiv his kidneys. Unseen, Elohl angled his longknife in and up, burying the slender weapon deep between the ribs and straight into Jovial’s heart.
Accurate. Precise. And cold.
The man gasped. His knees buckled, but the energy of the moment made him keep fighting past the killing blow. He swiped again and Elohl took it across his back, feeling it score deep through his leather jerkin, parting flesh and muscle. Elohl shoved his blade deeper, slashed with the other longknife across Jovial’s throat. Jovial crashed to the ground and Elohl let him fall with the first blade still buried in him to the hilt. Only one sentence escaped him as he fell.
“Den’Sennia can’t save you now...”
And then he was gone.
Breathing hard, Elohl stood over the dead body. Emptiness blew in his heart like a chill wind off glaciers. His body vibrated with energy from the fight, barely feeling his wounds. Jovial had asked for no mercy and Elohl had shown him none. And now, gazing down at a face he knew like a brother, Elohl felt his throat grip at last. A man he'd once called friend lay dead before him, bleeding out in the dusty road, his bright blue eyes glassy and dull. A man he'd once trusted. A man he'd commanded, trained, stood side-by-side with upon the battlefield with snow up to his knees and blood up to his elbows. He crouched, his gaze lingering upon Jovial's once-laughing face.
“Just another assassin... Just like all the rest.” The pronouncement knifed Elohl to his core, skewering his gut. How many more were there, out there, men he had once called friend now tracking him? How many more knew he was traveling alone after his discharge?
His gaze flicked to Eleshen. She was frightened, her breathing fast. But she'd stood her ground, her own boot-knife in her hand, ready just like the last time, her pack shucked to the dust.
“You would have fought for me.” Elohl murmured, something about her defiant manner touching him.
“Glad I didn't have to.” She breathed back.
Elohl's gaze flicked back to the dead man. Emotions warred within him. Disgust, rage, sadness. With a sigh, Elohl retrieved his knife, wiped it on the body. He couldn’t bring himself to shuck Jovial’s sliced and bloody clothes to look for marks. It was indecent, somehow, even though the man had been an assassin. But Elohl had seen him naked at the bath-houses of High Camp enough times to know he bore nothing but the ordinary scars of battle.
Elohl gazed at Jovial a moment more, then drew his glacial calm back into place. It was time to move on. He stood, wincing as he felt that nasty slash across his back at last, seeping with blood beneath his jerkin. The chest was bad too, runnels of blood making Elohl’s bracer slippery, coating his hand. But leaving the road was more important than his wounds. Elohl turned towards the trail by the roadside. “Up off the main road?”
Eleshen nodded, wordless for once in all the time Elohl had known her. Elohl grasped the wrists of the dead man, hauling him off the road and under a spreading cendarie that would hide the body from any passersby. He came back, scuffing dirt with his boots, covering the blood that had soaked into the road until it looked like a pack of wolves had simply brought down a deer, then drug it off to the woods to feast. Jovial would be wolf-meat soon anyway.
So much waste come from eight years of friendship.
Silence persisted as Eleshen and Elohl took the mossy track beneath its tunnel of ancient cendarie and pine, boxwood and birch. But Elohl’s wounds called, pulling and agonizing. After a few hundred feet, he shucked his pack at a stream. Pulling off his sliced-up shirt and jerkin, he washed blood away in the stream. He let Eleshen tend the deepest wounds on his back and chest with a salve, stitches, and a dressing, then fished out his jerkin and shirt of his Kingsman greys and put them on. Then up they climbed again in silence, listening to the chirr of tit-widgets as they switched back again and again, the trail ascending thousands of feet up along the snake of the ridge. And though it was grueling, sweat soon pouring from them both, Eleshen said not a single word as she tromped determinedly on, buried in thoughts of her own.
It was late afternoon by the time they gained the isolated valley beyond the top of the ridge. And now in the slanting rays, they found the secluded valley true to Eleshen’s word, a sprawling ruin nestled into the side of the mountains. The foundation-stones of a massive keep still lifted from the ground, though the forest had all but taken it back. A number of smaller foundations, houses and outbuildings, stood in precise semi-circles along more byrunstone roads out from the keep at the valley’s southern end. But enormous trees had worked their roots deep into the foundation-stones, some looking to be nearly three hundred years old, and all was quiet as specters beneath the spreading canopy.
Eleshen led the way, and at last, they came to a wide area that was still mostly a clearing of low grasses and dirt over flagstones. Angling steeply up the mountainside, it arced upwards in a series of semicircular tiers. At the bottom was a massive Alranstone. Larger than any he had yet seen, this byrunstone towered four man-heights tall. It had not two or three eyes amidst the whorls and carven sigils, but seven, one above the next, climbing to its pinnacle. All of which were lichen-covered and closed, serene in their everlasting sleep.
Elohl dropped his pack and approached, gazing up at the heights. He’d never felt drawn to a Stone before, had never really sensed them beyond the usual pressure he received in his sphere from normal stone. But this one felt different, compelling somehow. Elohl felt the rush of the Stone’s awareness as he approached within its boundary of Sight, his skin crawling and prickling his new wounds uncomfortably.
But something about it pulled at him, as if he could feel it in his mi
nd, a burgeoning pressure, an importance. Entranced, Elohl stepped up, extending one hand to touch the rough-chipped surface. A twinge crawled across his palm and wrist, the sensation like a wind blowing through his body from that contact, up into his mind. Elohl blinked, trying to dispel a sudden feeling of disorientation, as if he looked out over the entire amphitheater and the ruins from very high up. He had the sudden urge to climb the damn thing, a need to sit at the very top of the Stone and stare out over the valley far below and the high mountains beyond.
Then, with a blowing whisper, the sensation was gone.
“So what do we do?” Eleshen murmured at his side.
Elohl blinked, pulled from his trance. He glanced over, to see her standing there with awe upon her face, gazing up at the Stone’s towering height. “Put your hand to the Stone with mine.” Elohl murmured. “I’ll say a few words, and then it should take us in. Don’t fight it. It will hurt, badly.”
“Hurt?” Surprise flitted over her features.
“Badly.” Elohl repeated, preparing himself with that word as much as her. Rolling out his shoulders, he readied himself for the pain. Memories rose of the last time he’d done this, gripping his throat. Elohl drowned them, deep underwater. It needed to work today, and the Stone had to feel him. Concentrating on the sensation of the rock beneath his palm, Elohl murmured, “Elohl den’Alrahel, den’Urloel, den’Alrashesh. Blessings to the Kingsmen. Blessings to the Alrashemni. Open, Stone of Alran, pass me free.”
A shivering tingle lanced over his skin. A moment of recognition from the Stone, that words had been spoken, that someone stood penitent before it. But then it was gone. Elohl looked up. He wasn’t even certain the damn thing had judged him. All of the eyes upon the towering column were still closed. Disappointment clenched his gut, but relief eased his shoulders. Elohl sighed, then stepped away, walking back to his pack and rummaging through it for something to eat.
Blackmark (The Kingsmen Chronicles #1): An Epic Fantasy Adventure Page 17
