The day of the coronation dawned hot, a high cloud-laced sky heavy with humidity, which quickly began gathering into burgeoning towers of cumulus. Sweat trickled down Elohl’s face as he stood at attention in the Small Hall. There were thirty Guardsmen here already, all stock-still, all waiting just like Elohl. They’d spent all morning securing routes from the Dhenra and King Therel’s apartments, clearing them of personnel. And all of the noontime hour sweeping the Throne Hall, the Small Hall, and their adjacent rooms for the merriment that would take place after the ceremonies.
But the nobles were not here yet. The hall was still empty except for Guardsmen. Elohl gazed at the tall blonde thief, Luc, now in cobalt gear directly across from him in the niche on the far wall. The younger thief Gherris was further down the row, sullen with his perpetual snarl. But Luc held Elohl’s gaze, haughty and angry. They hadn’t exchanged two words to each other, except that when the man arrived, he had told Elohl that Ghrenna had a vision of the Dhenra getting hurt, possibly soon.
Suddenly, the double-doors at the end of the hall boomed open, admitting a weak draft in the sweltering mid-afternoon heat. A procession of Chancellors strolled across the inlaid white marble floor, talking amongst themselves. A small army of maids hustled about the room, directed by a tall, lean man Elohl recognized as the King’s Castellan. The Castellan directed the maids with firm smoothness, making sure everything was in last-minute order. As porters wheeled in trestle-tables with pitchers of lemon water to place along the richly plastered and gilded walls, the Castellan's gaze took in all the Guardsmen about the room with a flicker of distaste.
Elohl’s throat was parched. He salivated at the thought of water freshened with lemon. But this hardship was little compared to what he had faced in the highmountains. Another drip of sweat rolled down his face, slowing at his short beard, itching. He didn’t scratch, he didn’t flinch, he didn’t move. But he found himself thinking about the feel of ice beneath his bare hands, the sensation of cold wind across his neck from a glacier.
It helped. Marginally.
After the maids, various lords and ladies began filing in. Only those of highest station were permitted to the Signing, the Duchevies and wealthy merchant houses, small as this hall was. Elohl narrowed his eyes upon the retinue of leather- and fur-clad men and women from Elsthemen, noting a plethora of weapons about them. But all seemed in a high gay mood, chattering amongst themselves in their rolling native Elsthemi. Elohl picked out the thief Shara, who blended in nicely with a retinue from the Tourmaline Isles. Masquerading as a noble, her silken dress in the hodgepodge Isleman fashion managed to be quite scandalous, though Elohl knew there were knives hidden beneath. All smiles and wilting, fanning flirtation, she was expert at intrigue, drawing a crowd of men even now. Few faces, Elohl noted, held even a neutral closure today. Expectation sang high and bright in the hall, eager and merry. Virtually no one scowled, except for a man who had been identified to him by Fenton as Chancellor Theroun den’Vekir, off to one side, speaking low with his apprentice.
At last, a clarion call sounded. The clear, ringing fanfare of hunting horns split the humid air, signifying the Dhenra and her King’s approach. It was Elohl’s signal. As the nobles stirred to look and conversation died, Guardsmen worked their way forward, positioning themselves in a spread double-line on either side of the long red carpet, from the entrance to the gilded desk with its lit candelabra and pots of flowering cobalt lilac at the front of the room. Hands on swords, they pressed the crowd back with their presence and hard eyes, corralling the nobles away from the red carpet to make way.
Elohl watched the Dhenra and her King approach from the corner of his eye, holding the line though nobles pressed forward, craning their necks to get a look at the royal pair. They were resplendent. Dhenra Elyasin den’Ildrian wore a clinging gown of snow-blue silk with cobalt trimmings, Alrou-Mendera’s colors, the long train whispering behind her. Her person dripped with jewelry of sapphires. Her golden tresses were wound up through a sapphire circlet with diamonds set in gold, and she wore the white ermine Stole of the Queen about her shoulders.
King Therel Alramir had dressed accordingly, in crimson for the keshar-banner of Elsthemen. Richly brocaded black breeches rode his thighs, chased with gold thread, and a crimson cape cascaded from his shoulders, embroidered the same, a plain circlet of gold upon his brow and white-blonde hair. But he'd maintained the wilder look of the Highlands, a grey wolf-pelt over his cape, a black leather jerkin with plain buckles on beneath. His tall black boots were just as functional, buckled with their twin bootknives. Almost predatory, his pale blue eyes swept the hall as he moved forward down the red velvet carpet with his soon-to-be-Queen upon his arm.
As King Therel and Dhenra Elyasin stepped to the desk at the front of the hall, their retinue of four Guardsmen parted. Fenton was among them, and Olea's Second-Lieutenant Aldris den’Farahan. Elohl stood close to the desk at his position by the head of the red carpet, Luc across from him. The Dhenra and King stood before the desk, a few of Therel’s Highswords close near the Dhenra’s guards. A skinny old man with a hound-wrinkled face stepped behind the desk and raised his arms, golden medallions of office winking across his shoulders and over the front of his rich black velvet robes with gold their embroidery. Another blast of clarion rang from the horns. Fenton had told Elohl that Chancellor Evshein den’Lhamann was master of these proceedings, and he raised his thin, reedy voice in welcome.
Elohl’s gaze raked the attendants of the Dhenra and King Therel, and the nearby nobility. A thin lord with bushy white eyebrows sniffed and itched his nose. A woman in green silk reached to her cleavage, but it was only a lace handkerchief she withdrew to mop her face. King Therel’s white-haired First Sword shifted his stance, watching the Chancellor with boredom, two hands settled easily upon the pommel of his sword. A dark-haired man from the Isles contingent grumbled and reached into his lapels, but it was only for a set of gold-rimmed spectacles. The King’s Castellan was hovering back by the paneled wall, immaculately still in his grey silk, hands clasped servilely. A woman in pink silk reached around surreptitiously to her behind, but it was only for a good scratch, relief flooding her face.
The Chancellor had concluded his speech. The Dhenra was saying a few words. Heads nodded, faces smiled. Handkerchiefs and starched lace fans were stilled so that all present could hear in the stifling space. A boom of thunder sounded suddenly, ringing through the hall. A number of people jumped at the sound. After its rolling wave died, the Dhenra continued, calm and practiced. Elohl’s gaze fell upon Fenton, seeing him tight with a collected tension, his gaze fierce, rapt upon Elyasin. She finished, and then King Therel Alramir said a few noble words. One hand upon his sword, the other ready at his longknife upon his belt, Elohl kept sweeping the room. More people mopped faces, cleavage, fanning themselves, the heat in the space thick now. Another boom of thunder rippled the hall. A few nobles were moving to the walls, enjoying a chalice of lemon-water as the proceedings dragged on.
At last, it was time for the signing. Elohl had been informed that there were to be two signings, the first a Pledge of Queenship for Elyasin alone to sign, conferring to her the authority of ruling monarch of Alrou-Mendera. The following coronation was all pomp and show. The second was to be the Writ of Marriage, securing the alignment of a Queen-proper to a King. Dhenra Elyasin said a few words. And then her Chancellor did, handing her a gilded fountain-pen with a frond-like tourli-feather to write with, and then a small, ornately-worked scepter. Dipping her pen in a gilded inkwell, Elyasin affixed her signature to the first document while holding the scepter. The Chancellor raised his hands, said a brief sentence, and the hall erupted into applause.
It went on a long while. Elohl’s eyes roved the hall, watching.
The clapping died down. Elyasin handed the scepter back to the Chancellor, who set it to the side in its velvet-lined box. The pen she handed to King Therel Alramir, who dipped it in the gilded inkwell. After reciting a short pledge, he
bent and affixed his name to the second document. He handed the fountain-pen back to the Dhenra. Elyasin dipped the pen, recited her pledge. She bent, scrawling her name.
And that’s when Elohl saw it. More than saw it, he felt it. Like a push, a nudge from the area of the desk, he felt the movement of King Therel’s First Sword. Elohl’s gaze snapped to the white-haired man. Saw the way his stance changed, just a shift of the hips and feet. But it put the Dhenra within reach of the tip of that long, plain steel sword at his hip.
Elohl was in motion before he knew it. His sword whistled from its scabbard. Sensate sphere tingling, his golden Inkings burning, nothing else existed for Elohl except reaching his target. Frightened shouts rang in the hall. He didn’t hear them. Other Guardsmen began to turn, to react, too slow. Fenton was like liquid lightning at his side, but Elohl was faster. His sword was already slashing the white-haired First Sword across the side of the neck, a deep cut that nearly took the man’s head off, a moment before Fenton’s sword pierced the First Sword’s heart.
But the damage was done.
The First Sword of Elsthemen gurgled and went down, his eyes rolling up in pain but not surprise. Clutching his neck, he bled out upon the white marble of the floor as Elohl kicked his sword away. And then he saw the Dhenra. One hand clutched her side. The other still held the gilded pen, her jade eyes wide. Crimson bloomed from beneath her fingers in a broad flush over her flank and abdomen, soaking the rent blue silk of her gown.
She staggered, gasping. Elohl rushed in to catch the Dhenra as she sank sideways. But her King and now-husband Therel Alramir was there first, scooping Elyasin up. Elohl spun, his back to the King and Queen, sword out, ready for other attackers. Battle-fever roared through his veins in a vicious heat. Red tinged his vision, his sphere wide, feeling for threats. Searing like lightning, his golden Inkings felt alive beneath his jerkin as his gaze frisked the terror and confusion of the hall.
And he found one man in the hall who was not in confusion. Cold grey eyes held Elohl’s, hands clasped demurely in his grey silk. The King’s Castellan narrowed his eyes upon Elohl. A sea of people obscured Elohl’s vision suddenly. Elohl snarled, frustrated in the melee. When they moved, the Castellan was gone. Elohl cursed, livid, furious. He had no choice but to follow King Therel Alramir, now carrying the injured Elyasin out of the hall, kicking a side door open with one powerful boot. Elohl was on his heels, Fenton and Aldris a step behind, a few of Therel’s burly Highswords with them. Lords and ladies were screaming, fleeing like frightened cows. Luc rushed in, a moment before they barricaded the door.
King Therel was laying Elyasin down upon the thick cobalt carpet of the empty room. Cradling her head carefully, his eyes were a wreak of concern. Screams still issued from the other room, shouts, a clash of ringing metal, sword on sword. Blood was pooling beneath the Queen, soaking into the carpet in a grisly spread. Elyasin was gasping, short bursts that kept her belly as still as possible. Pain teared her eyes.
“Let me through!” Luc’s snarl sliced through Elohl’s battle-fugue. The thief pushed roughly past, dropping to his knees by Elyasin and the King. King Therel tried to shove him away, but Luc threw a smart punch, knocking the King square on the jaw. Therel blinked. Elohl saw him go for a dagger. Elohl reached out, gripping the Elsthemi King’s wrist.
“He’s a healer!”
Luc was all snarls as he pressed his hands to Elyasin’s wound. “I’m a fucking King’s Physician! She’s my charge, dammitall! Hold on, Elyasin… hold on, girl…”
She blinked upon seeing the golden-blonde thief leaning over her, and Elohl heard her surprised murmur. “Luc?”
“Yeah, it’s me… fuckitall… lay still girl, you’re hurt pretty bad. We can’t move you yet. Give me a minute.”
“Like when I fell from the orange tree…cracked my head…” Elyasin murmured, barely audible, eyes fluttering closed.
And Elohl saw something he thought he’d never see from the thief. Unshed tears pooled in Luc’s eyes, his face hopeless. “Yeah, yeah… Like the time at the orange tree… gods fuckitall to hell…”
Pounding began on one barricaded door. “In the name of the Highlands, open up! Or we will break our way in!”
“My Highswords…” King Therel raised his voice. “Not now!”
“My liege! They’re calling for your head! We need to get you out! A third of our retinue have already been arrested!”
Therel blinked, his handsome visage twisting into bleak anger. “Control the hall, Yhurgen! We need a route cleared to the West Stables. Send men ahead to our grooms and protect our horses! And fuck it, they’d better be ready to ride by the time I get there!”
Another voice growled from the hall, like boulders crushing trees. “Elohl! Fenton! We can’t hold! The Chancellors have taken over the Guard, they’re issuing orders for the King’s death! The thieves rallied with clans Visk and Brackthorn, enough so we could get to you, but the Guard have them pinned! They’ll break through any moment now! You have to go!”
“Vargen!” Elohl shouted back. “We’re going with the King! Hold them off and meet us at the West Stables!” King Therel lifted his eyebrows, and Elohl caught his look. “Your Queen is going with you. And so am I.”
“Elohl!” Vargen shouted again, “I’ve got to get Olea out of the cells!”
Aldris shoved the furniture away from the door. “I’ll go with Vargen. I know a fast route to the cells. We’ll meet you at the stables. Alrashemnari aere alranesh vhekhan! Long live the Alrashemni!” He shoved his way out. Elsthemi retainers flooded in with hooded eyes and weapons bared. Elohl heard a sigh beside him. He glanced over to see Luc, white with fatigue, mop his sweaty brow with one arm.
“We can move her now. She’s still bleeding, but I can do the rest later.”
“Come on, my sweetgrape,” King Therel was careful as he scooped Elyasin up from the soaked carpet, her blood-slicked silk clinging. “Don’t let them crush you yet…” She keened as he hefted her into his arms. And then her head dangled, passed out from the pain. “Whoever set this up is going to pay!” Therel snarled, his handsome visage rippling, cruel and cold like he bared fangs. “Alrashemnari aenta trethan lheroun, ahle fhis brethii!”
Alrashemni keep their promises, to the bitter end.
Elohl pressed one palm to his heart, his other hand upon his sword. King Therel paused, regarding him, then nodded. Fenton had stepped to the wall and stood by an open servant’s door that had been well-concealed in the wainscoting. Therel turned with Elyasin in his arms, making for the door. Elohl glanced at Fenton as thunder rolled through the room, a hard patter of rain beginning upon the byrunstone roof tiles of Roushenn. Fenton was livid, trembling with a hard rage, his gold-brown eyes so hot with wrath they seemed to burn in the dim light as heavy green storm clouds swallowed the day beyond the high windows.
He shared Elohl’s glance for a moment, and a lash of intensity between them made Elohl’s golden Inkings surge with fire.
Fenton looked away, falling into step ahead of King Therel, leading them out by the servant’s passage. Through twists and turns of long corridors, dodging and weaving in tight spaces, they startled footmen and maids as they took back ways through the servant’s passages. Twice they met with a knot of Guardsmen and engaged arms in the cramped halls, protecting King Therel with the Queen still unconscious in his arms. Elohl was a blur of speed, fighting with both sword and longknife in the close confines, his blue jerkin spattered with the blood of other men, Fenton proving a strong and vastly capable fighter at his side. The Guardsmen were killed to a man, slow from their confusion facing some of their own and seeing the dying Queen in arms. But even so, King Therel lost two of his Highswords. They took a turn, angled down a long hall, then another, jogging quickly. Rounding another corner, they found a hall as empty as the last three.
“Two more passages, and we’re out.” Fenton breathed easy, as if the fighting had affected him not at all.
Elohl nodded, moving forward sw
iftly. When suddenly, the walls of Roushenn shifted. One moment, they were running a straight course. But the next, the long hall began to split from the middle, walls starting to rotate, mirrors flashing into view where there had been nothing but bare byrunstone before. Doorways slid into place between the mirrors, and then slid more, creating impossible corners and angles.
“To me!” King Therel roared.
Elohl skidded to a halt and backed close to the Elsthemi King next to Fenton, weapons outward, creating a tight knot around the King and Queen, his heart thundering in his ears. The hallway roiled and buckled in all directions, impossible, terrifying. What had been a hallway was now a maze, branches and multiple halls opening outward from their position, sliding and shifting and sliding again with wrenching grinding sounds of stone on stone. Mirrors reflected each other, creating an infinity of halls. An infinity of men gathered in a tight knot. Only Fenton seemed unphased, standing grim beside Elohl. His face held a hard readiness, his courage steady, weapons trembling not at all.
Suddenly, Elohl’s world tilted. He staggered. His vision warped. The maze before him seemed to stretch, a faint scent in the air of sweetness and stench, like lemons gone to rot in a honey-crock. Reeling from the poison permeating the air, Elohl sank hard to one knee. His head was full of the lemon-sick stench. His stomach churned with it, bile rising to his mouth. Disoriented, his eyes wouldn’t focus, his muscles could not keep him steady. Everything was reeling, the poison flowing thick as death.
“Fenton!” He yelled, coughing, choking. “Poison in the air! We need to move!”
But just then, a roar split the moving hall. A shattering, shrieking roar of something bestial, like a hawk’s whistle given the power of a lion in battle. Mirrors burst in their frames upon the walls, showering glass over the company. A flash of a black leathery body caught Elohl’s eye in an unburst mirror as it rotated past. Fear rushed through Elohl, a vast, obliterating terror that chilled his every vein. A man’s scream sounded behind Elohl, then another. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two Highswords go down in the rear of their company. Fast movements like an animal speared his blurring vision, the creature leather-skinned like alligators but whip-lean and standing upright, twice the height of a man.
Pressure flashed at Elohl. He whipped his head back as talons big as butcher-knives raked past his neck, red-tipped with gore and stinking of entrails. Screams sounded nearby. King Therel’s roars. Elohl felt the man stagger behind him. The creature shrieked, its piercing tone slicing Elohl’s eardrums. Talons reflected in the churning mirrors. Its massive head with corkscrewing horns like a ram, jaws like a lean, ravaged wolf. Thick with muscle, lean and fast, it dove in, slashing and leaping. Jaws wide and fangs massive, its mouth was full of blood and slicker things. Elohl threw himself sideways, pushing Therel and Elyasin out of the way. The creature lunged, turned, scrabbling for purchase as its massive claws punched and chipped solid bluestone.
And suddenly, Elohl saw the flash of a man in cobalt rolling in, right under those swiping knives of death. Lunging upward, he drove a longsword right into the beast’s bony chest. The creature shrieked, enraged, looking down at its wound and staggering backwards. Fenton den’Kharel surged upwards, driving his sword to the hilt into the creature and Elohl heard the blade ring as it was wedged between two blocks of stone in a non-moving wall. Twice his size, towering over him with its long, powerful limbs, the beast snarled at Fenton, gnashing teeth, swiping with razored claws, enraged that it was pinned to the wall. So fast he blurred in Elohl’s reeling vision, Fenton rolled backwards, springing up close with both hands beneath Elohl’s armpits, hauling him to standing.
“Get them up and run, Undoer be damned! RUN!” Fenton roared into Elohl’s face, his brown-gold eyes flashing red in the light of the shifting halls. “The Kets al’Roch is nothing you can best!”
Elohl staggered, disoriented, watching the spinning walls. The beast whirled in his drugged vision. Fenton grasped him by the shoulders, slapped him hard across the face. Elohl’s golden Inkings surged at that contact, the fire of pain shocking his mind to clarity. “You’re the only one who can get them out! Use your gifts, dammit! Close your eyes and use your gifts to get them out!”
Quickly, Elohl sheathed his sword and dagger. He took a breath, finding the space of calm that lived below his waking mind. The one that moved on instinct, the one that knew direction and danger without being told. His vision was warping, his head reeling, but through it all he saw Fenton hauling up Therel, depositing Elyasin back in his arms, hauling up the healer Luc and the few Highswords left to their decimated company, roaring at the King to follow Elohl.
Elohl shut his eyes, feeling out with his senses. A sphere spread in his mind, touching the spinning walls, feeling the position and density of the beast, still occupied trying to claw the sword from its chest. But here in his gift he was steady, needing no sight of his eyes to keep his course. And far off, up to the right he felt it, where the dense walls of stone gave way to air and spaciousness at last.
The way out.
“King Therel! Follow me! And stay close!” Elohl bellowed.
Elohl slid forward, lithe and fast, like a heron in a stream being shot at with arrows, dodging and weaving his way through the ever-shifting halls by the touch of his gift alone. By his gift he could feel the solid, lean bulk of Therel following, the Dhenra in his arms, the others close in a tight knot. But the last thing he felt as he dashed on was a man standing alone, left behind. Facing off with the beast, Fenton stood defiant with two longknives drawn. And a pressure built around him that surged in Elohl’s ears, pummeling through the sphere of his gift like a gathering thunderstorm.
CHAPTER 36 – KHOUREN
Blackmark (The Kingsmen Chronicles #1): An Epic Fantasy Adventure Sword and Highland Magic Page 55
