Blackmark (The Kingsmen Chronicles #1): An Epic Fantasy Adventure Sword and Highland Magic

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  * * *

  Ghrenna came awake with the sound of muted conversation issuing from the next room. She was tucked back in the bed, the now-washed vomit basin and a pitcher of water upon the bedside table. It wasn’t much later, the sun high over the avenue beyond the window, the room muggy, though Ghrenna shivered with a chill. Conversation in the next room rose from a murmur to a sharp lash, Luc’s voice hot in anger. Another voice took charge, low and growling but young, Gherris.

  At last, the door was flung open. Gherris stormed through, sliding knives into his leather harness. “I don’t care what we’re up against, Luc! If this man Elohl needs help, we’re going. Protecting the Dhenra was supposed to be my birthright, and I will stand by that if he is at our lead! I’ve spent too many years tearing myself apart. You’re the one who hates that I kill! Let me use it for once. If Elohl is a good enough climber to surprise Ghrenna on the wall, he’s good enough to take lead for us.”

  “I’m not going to the palace! There are guards all over that place.” Luc growled, severe.

  Ghrenna opened her eyes enough to see Gherris give Luc a withering stare. “We’ll be the guards, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “That seems to be what this Fenton fellow has planned.” Eleshen was on Luc’s heels.

  Shara followed, her eyebrows knitting. “I’ll be singled out.”

  Gherris turned, eyeing her. “Being a woman, you mean?”

  She nodded. “There can’t be that many Guardswomen. Do you think this Fenton fellow could get me disguised as a noble instead? I can do the rest.”

  “I really don’t know what he can do.” Eleshen shrugged. “But Elohl seemed to trust him right off. It all seems a bit convenient to me, but perhaps this fellow simply has been waiting for the right moment to come forward.”

  Gherris threw his knife point-down into the floorboards. “That’s it. I’m in. Shara?”

  She nodded, pulling a knife and throwing it down also.

  “Luc?”

  Luc huffed grandiosely, most likely for Eleshen’s benefit, then threw his knife down also. “I’m going to regret this. If anyone at the palace recognizes me, I swear to you I will cut my way out.”

  “Done.” Gherris collected his knife. “Browns and tans everyone, blacks underneath. We’re going to scout the guardhouse and ask around for this Fenton fellow.”

  “I need to go with you,” Ghrenna tried to struggle up to a seat. “I have to tell Elohl about my vision. If it’s the Dhenra I saw…” Her headache was only a dull throb, but the weakness was crushing. She managed to pull herself to sitting, but that was all. When she looked up, everyone was watching her.

  “You stay put.” Luc’s command was non-negotiable. “I’ll tell Elohl what you saw.”

  “I’ll stay with her.” Eleshen had determination in her posture, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and staring Ghrenna down. “I’ve got no business at Roushenn. You all know what Elohl looks like?” Gherris, Luc, and Shara all nodded, as they set about the room gathering their regular scouting clothes in dun colors to put on over their blacks.

  “We do.” Shara intoned as she wriggled into a tan and blue dress, rolling up the sleeves of her blacks and unlacing the shirt collar to tuck beneath the bodice of the dress. “But what does this Vargen fellow and Fenton look like?”

  “Vargen you can’t possibly miss,” Eleshen fired like a weapons drill-master. “Just look for the biggest man you’ve ever seen, blacksmith’s build, with hair like Elohl’s. He’ll probably also be the most soft-spoken in the room, but with a voice like boulders crashing downhill. Fenton is wiry, taller than me but shorter than Elohl. Brown hair and fairly lovely gold-brown eyes, with a resonant voice, like a harper. You’d think him plain at first glance, but he's... stunning, somehow. I can't explain it.”

  Shara threw a cloak over her dress, hiding the lumpiness of her harness beneath it. “Got it. You boys ready to scout?”

  Luc and Gherris had coarse brown flax on, rough pants that made them look like farmers, lighter shirts that were soft but homespun. Both outfits hid their gear nicely, and neither needed a cloak. Gherris added a farmer’s straw hat to hide his scowl. Ghrenna saw Luc and Gherris both add knives up beneath their wrist bracers, and down into their worn leather boots. Black boots didn’t fit either man’s outfit, but most people never looked at your feet.

  “Ready.” Gherris sounded it, his dark grey eyes flashing beneath his hat.

  “As I’ll ever be, I suppose.” Luc was dramatically put-upon, glancing at Ghrenna. He paused a moment, weighing her. “How’s the head?”

  “I’ll manage. I had threllis long before you came around.”

  He flinched as if she had struck him. Ghrenna hadn’t meant it to sound so harsh. “Right, then. We’ll try to check in by nightfall.”

  Ghrenna nodded. “Just go. Find Elohl.”

  “We’ll make the Kingsmen proud, Ghren.” It was Gherris who answered, fierce and feverish. Ghrenna nodded, and then they were out the door into the hall. Luc lingered, watching her, his hand on the door as the other two stalked off. Eleshen had already bustled to the other room, no doubt refreshing Ghrenna’s water, and it left Luc and Ghrenna alone a moment.

  “I’m sorry, Luc,” Ghrenna murmured. It left so much unsaid between them, but it was honest, and it was all she had.

  His demeanor was bitter, not a trace of teasing anywhere in him. “Not as much as I am, Ghren. If this is what it takes, to prove to you what kind of man I am, I’ll do it. What does Elohl have that I don’t? History? History is what you make of it. You can start rewriting your history anytime, Ghrenna. I did.”

  “I can’t run from this, Luc. This connection with Elohl, these visions…they’ll either kill me, or I’ll figure out what they’re for. Either way, I need Elohl’s help.”

  “But you need me, too.” His eyes were fervent now, determined.

  “I never said I didn’t.” Ghrenna murmured, feeling split inside.

  He paused at that, golden eyebrows knitting. “But you’ll never admit that you do.” Luc was out and through the door like smoke, shutting it soundly behind him.

  Ghrenna sat back against the headboard and pillows, feeling hollow. She couldn’t stop staring at the door. Maybe Luc would come back. Maybe Elohl would come back. Maybe they would both leave. Leave her alone, again. So alone and unloved. The witch who saw deaths. Maybe they would only tear each other apart, because of her, leaving them all to die out in the snow. An image filled Ghrenna suddenly. A waking vision. Two men, upon their knees before her, stripped to the waist and bloody from fighting. In a cavern of ice, they knelt before her upon sigils that glowed now with a blue-white fire, and now flamed with orange and red.

  And with her bared knife, Ghrenna felt herself slay them both.

  She jolted in the bed. Her headache flared like fire. Eleshen was peering at her concernedly. Ghrenna knew she was pale, that she was sweating cold despite the stifling heat of the day in their small rooms. Eleshen offered another wrung-out washcloth. Ghrenna took it gratefully, laying it over her forehead. Resting her head back on the pillows, she tried to forget what she had just seen, what she had just experienced, the raw brutality of it.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’ve had worse.”

  Eleshen eyed her. “Does this always happen when you have a vision?”

  Ghrenna nodded. “I’m usually weak, and there’s a headache, but sometimes I seize. The nosebleed was new, though.” She could still taste the tang of it in her mouth.

  “The others say Elohl triggered it. Your seizing. Last night.”

  This time, it was Ghrenna who eyed Eleshen. “You’re his woman, aren’t you?”

  The green-eyed girl sniffed in irritation. “I’m not his woman. I’m not a cow. We’re simply traveling together.”

  Ghrenna lifted an eyebrow, got a spike of pain, then thought better of it, relaxing back against the headboard. “Could have fooled me.”

  “What’s that supposed to m
ean?”

  “You were taking my measure the moment Luc opened the door. And his charms usually work on women.”

  “I’m not the type to be charmed by rogues.” Eleshen was scowling, arms crossed, peevish. “Anyway, he’s got eyes for only one woman, and you’re a damn fool if you don’t see it! That Luc is wrapped around your little toe, True Seer, and you’re squashing his love like a cockroach!”

  Ghrenna blinked, moving the cold washcloth to the back of her neck. “You’re feisty.”

  “We’re not discussing me!” Eleshen spat, all hot vinegar and quicksilver.

  “You would have made a good Kingswoman.”

  Eleshen’s lips dropped open. “What?”

  “You heard me. You’ve got the gall for it. And a sharp mind.”

  “I…” Eleshen looked flustered a moment, fiddling with her long blonde braid. Her cheeks flushed, and she was pretty when she did. Lovely, in an innocent kind of way that Ghrenna would never have. “I wanted to be a Kingswoman, when I was younger. Elohl’s father saved me, you know. From a burning building. I would have died were it not for him. Ever since then… I used to dream about it. Heroic fancies and all that.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Quelsis, originally. My father Eiric den’Fhenrir was Dhepan of Quelsis. He always called the Kingsmen in when there was trouble. Our family was declared treasonous for trying to put pressure on the Crown after the Summons. I’ve been keeping an inn in the mountains ever since. I never got to live those childish dreams.”

  “Neither did I.” Ghrenna murmured, feeling all those lost years.

  Eleshen blinked, and her face rouged. “I owe you an apology. I was so… possessive of Elohl. I never thought how all your lives must have been. Something rides him, Ghrenna. Something hard and demanding and brutal. He’s been lighter since the seven-eye stone, but… sometimes I still feel that darkness in him.”

  Ghrenna felt tears welling. She stilled them, knowing that any crying would make her headache wretched. “Elohl wasn’t always troubled. He demanded much of himself, but he used to be serene, for the most part. I think I always troubled him, though. It’s good that he has you. He needs someone… bright. Happy.”

  Eleshen was all kindness now, much like Shara, reaching out to take Ghrenna’s hand. “Isn’t there anything I can do?”

  “There’s a tin in my pack, there on the nightstand. Will you bring it? And a glass pipe in the leather pouch on the belt of my harness, there, on the chair. Light it, please, set it here by bed.”

  Eleshen did, and as Ghrenna settled back down into the covers, she reached out to take away the now-warm washcloth. “Do you need food?”

  Ghrenna shook her head, feeling the threllis in the air taking the edge off her pain. “No. If I eat, I’ll vomit again.”

  “Was your vision something happy, at least?” Eleshen quipped with a hopeful smile. “Something nice to compensate for all this pain?”

  Ghrenna smiled a little, the threllis wafting through the air soothing her now, swaddling her in a blanket for her mind. “You have so much hope. No. My visions are mostly full of dire tidings. I used to think that was why I get so much pain when I have them. Because the visions are nothing I want to see. And I fight them…”

  Eleshen had taken Ghrenna’s hand while Ghrenna spoke, like a sister, her eyes full of sorrow. “That’s so awful. What did you see this time, that triggered this latest bout?”

  Ghrenna’s gaze went long, staring past Eleshen towards the door. “Nothing I can control. Nothing I can ever unburden myself from.”

  “Sometimes talking about these things helps.” Eleshen murmured.

  Ghrenna glanced at her. Eleshen’s pretty heart-shaped face was tight with concern, and Ghrenna saw again why Elohl kept her close. Ghrenna drew a deep breath of threllis-smoke, and sighed it out, relaxing into the pillows. What would it matter, to talk about it? “They’re often indistinct,” she murmured, staring up at the ceiling now, “but sometimes I feel them, like I’m the one being hurt. This time, I felt a woman, saw it, experienced it, felt her pain as she was stabbed…”

  And Ghrenna found herself opening up to this bright-eyed confidante of Elohl’s, telling everything she could remember of the event she had witnessed, and of the white-eyed woman beckoning from the Alranstone with the bloody half-lidded oculus. It felt good to unburden herself, for once, telling it all, all the pain of the vision, every horrible agony of the woman who had been stabbed. Telling someone how Ghrenna felt herself dying, felt her own body screaming in agony from the wound. That she’d been witness to the event, in the vision, and also inside the woman’s body, all at the same time.

  A horrible place to be.

  Eleshen listened to it all, taking it in, every awful detail. And when Ghrenna was done, she only nodded. Lifting a hand, she touched Ghrenna’s brow with the kindness of a mother, smoothing back Ghrenna’s sweat-streaked waves from her forehead. “I’m glad you told me. No one should have to bear such things alone.”

  Something about her simple kindness broke Ghrenna. Tingling prickled her eyes, and she held her tears back. Crying would only make her headache flare. “I think I need to sleep a while.” Ghrenna murmured, threllis making her groggy, her eyelids heavy now.

  “I’ll leave the pitcher of water.” Eleshen eyed Ghrenna a moment, her brows pinched in concern. Then seemed to change her mind, wrinkling her nose at the threllis. “Do you mind if I take a walk? Do you need me here while you sleep?”

  Ghrenna nodded. “The pipe will be out in half an hour. I should be asleep by then. I usually sleep three to four hours when this happens. Do what you need to.”

  Eleshen rose to her feet regally but spoiled it by nearly tripping over herself as she turned for the door. “I’ll inform the goodwife to check in on you if I’m not back soon.”

  Ghrenna nodded, but her mind was already clouding into sleep as she heard the latch click in the door.

  CHAPTER 29 – DHERRAN