Hey epic fantasy fans!
I’m so excited to bring you a new excerpt today from the as-yet-untitled first book of the follow-up series to the Kingsmen Chronicles.
This second series begins where the Kingsmen Chronicles left off, with (most) of your favorite characters returning, and I have been working on it concurrently with the prequel Khehemni series.
CAUTION: CONTAINS SPOILERS! Read no further if you don’t want to know about events after the Kingsmen Chronicles (Blackmark, Bloodmark, and Goldenmark).
In this scene, we touch base with Fenton den’Kharel (Fentleith Alodwine, Last Scion of Khehem) and Thaddeus den’Lhor, and all that’s happened for them since magic was unleashed back into the world after the Rennkavi’s Ritual.
Fenton is fighting his Wolf and Dragon wyrria, and Thad is a voice of reason in his life – though they get a pretty nasty surprise at the end of the chapter!
Enjoy the preview, and let me know any comments or questions you have below! :)
Onward to glory,
Jean
CHAPTER 3 – FENTON
Sipping a sour Yegovian cider with a crisp raspberry finish, Fentleith Alodwine leafed through ancient parchments as swirling white fey-lights drifted around him. Shelves of books towered up the octagonal space of the reading-room, interspersed by racks of scrolls and codices illuminated in the comfortable light. Ferns and moss dripped down one wall into a flowing basin, this space one of hundreds of alcoves that warrened through his grandfather Leith Alodwine’s gargantuan library. Tunneling back into the roots of the Kingsmount from the Deephouse of Roushenn Palace, the opulent rat-maze had only one entrance that Fenton had found, though it immediately branched off into hordes of tunnels.
The first alcove on the right, closest to the doors, Fenton had commandeered this particular reading-room as his study. A heavy tome sat upon the desk, which Fenton leafed through – a book of schema for the White Palace in Valenghia, yet another of Leith’s monumental works across the continent. Fenton reached out, absently taking a swig of his cider, his eyes fixed upon the tome as he came to diagrams for the highest towers – one of which he’d been a prisoner in last year due to the odious magics of the old Vhinesse.
But as he wiped his lips with the fingers of one hand, he winced. His silver bracers practically burned upon his skin now, and as Fenton glanced at the left one, he saw the sigils standing out in high relief, searing with blue-white wyrric energy. The blisters in his skin at the edges of the metal were livid, an angry red. With a frustrated growl, Fenton set the tome down. Massaging his wrists gently, he debated pulling the silver pins in his manacles but decided against it. Glancing at the small Praoughian clockwork upon the desk, Fenton set his jaw in irritation. He’d worked too late into the evening and the Soldier’s Ball was starting in a half-hour. It didn’t give him time to go blow off magical steam in the desert ruin tonight.
He’d just have to weather his raging Wolf and Dragon wyrria until morning.
“Problem with your wyrric bracers, sir?”
The energetic, bright young voice of Thaddeus den’Lhor, Roushenn’s new Castellan and Queen’s Historian, raised Fenton’s gaze. Wearing a handsome hunter-green jerkin that complemented his eyes and tawny blonde hair, his looped silver chains of the Castellan’s office pinned to his high collar, Thad strolled in carrying a heavy pile of tomes. These he promptly heaved to his own desk on the other side of the reading-room, then set a few scrolls upon a table covered in vellums mapping Alranstones across the continent.
Glancing to Fenton, Thad’s pleasant face had lost much of its boyishness in the past months. He’d taken up bouting at swords with Aldris, and the once-lanky scribe had shoulders now, his tall, lean frame filling out with honed muscles. He’d dumped traditional Castellan’s robes for more sporting attire; his jerkin, leather breeches, and boots reminiscent of the Palace Guard. His tawny hair was brush-cut like the Guard, no spectacles gracing his face. Like Fenton, Thad’s growing wyrria had changed him in the past months; he no longer needed spectacles, his vision now sharp as an eagle.
As was his attention. The young man missed nothing, Queen Elyasin den’Ildrian Alramir’s good right hand for every negotiation, never needing to scribe a single note as he watched and listened to proceedings with alert focus. It was a wyrria even Fenton had never heard of, but Thad’s impeccable memory was a blessing in Leith’s library as they worked night after night, deciphering dead languages and old records. One of only a few people in Roushenn that knew about Leith’s library, as per the Queen’s orders, Thaddeus often spent long evenings there with Fenton, their heads together deciphering scrolls and codices. But it had been six weeks since Thad’s appointment as Castellan, and the lad had been busy like a dog with three heads on six different scents, and Fenton found himself wondering when in Halsos the young man slept.
“No need to call me sir, Thad. Technically, you outrank me in the palace now. What have you found?” Fenton kicked out a boot underneath the desk, pushing the chair opposite his out in invitation. Thad gave a grin and sat, unrolling a long vellum scroll upon Fenton’s ironwood desk. Fenton gave a wry smile, seeing it was covered in stark black ink. Written in Old Khehemni, the document was one Leith had scribed, with Leith’s classic hasty bent to the letters and diacritical marks – as if his mind had too much conflict behind it to slow down and chronicle properly. But for all that, it was detailed, the entire vellum covered in minuscule writing and diagrams of clockworks and machinery.
“Thought this might interest you,” Thad spoke, setting glass weights upon the edges of the scroll. “They’re explanations of how the clockworks of Roushenn were created, and how Leith used principles of wyrric resonance to bind them.”
“Anything in there that can help with these?” Fenton asked wryly, holding up one blistering wrist.
Thad sucked his teeth, his handsome young face frowning with concern. “I take it the power in the bracers to contain your magic is wearing off.”
“Not exactly. I think I’m outgrowing them.”
Silence enveloped the alcove as Thad reached out, easing long fingers delicate as a physician’s over Fenton’s blisters. Fenton’s breath heaved, high and hot, as his wyrria surged inside his body. He had the urge to roar and slap Thad’s hand away, though the pain was nothing. It was simply the overwhelming sensation of his wyrria, vicious to be freed. Slowly, Fenton retrieved his hand. Wary, Thad watched him, one hand slipping unconsciously to the brace of longknives he wore now at his hip as he sat back.
“Aren’t you going to the Soldier’s Ball tonight?” Thad asked, wariness in his jade gaze.
“So I promised Aldris.”
“You should go out to the desert instead.” Thad admonished, sitting back and crossing one boot over his knee with a level gaze. It was a commanding look, something General Theroun den’Vekir might have given once. But it was Thad’s look now, since stepping into his new position at Elyasin’s side. From a mousey, lanky scribe he’d changed into the sword-honed young lord he might have been had his Alrashemni parents not been killed ten years ago. Learning his battle-right at weapons was not the only Kingsman legacy Thad had taken up in the past months. Stark black inkings showed where his jerkin buckled up the midline, his shirt partly unlaced and displaying his centermost star. It was still red around the edges, Thad having gone through his Inking and Khemri-venom dreams only the week before to earn his Eighth Seal.
He was a full Kingsman now and it showed in his quiet, confident demeanor, his eyes flashing with intelligence in the moving lights of the fae globes.
“I know I should go to the desert to discharge my magic,” Fenton smiled wryly, “but it’s not going to make a difference soon. My wyrria’s recovering too quickly these days. I need to figure out a way to control my magic beyond these bracers, Thad. And soon.”
“Star-metal is easily imbued with wyrria,” Thad gestured to Fenton’s bracers, quoting discoveries they had read recently, “as is bluestone, various types of granite and crystal, and also rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds, but we have the distinct problem of not knowing how to imbue the objects. If we did, I’m sure Elyasin would commission a new pair of bracers from the palace smiths. Leith collected enough scraps of star-metal back in Room Forty-Three that we might use, though Aeon knows what he was going to do with it.”
They’d devised a numbering system for Leith’s warren of a library, and Fenton knew the room Thad meant. A treasure-vault of arcane artifacts, it had taken Fenton and Thad five full weeks to discover the trick of unlocking it; a combination of reciting an ancient Khehemni prayer combined with a specific series of inundations from Fenton’s Wolf and Dragon wyrria. The objects in that room were so full of wyrria they made Fenton’s hair stand on end, and Thad had immediately suggested they not touch a damn thing. Only the ironbound chest of star-metal on the floor hadn’t felt hair-raisingly awful, but that didn’t mean Fenton trusted it.
With a sigh, Fenton wiped both hands over his face. Lacing his fingers with his elbows on the desk, he met Thad’s level gaze. The lad was extremely intuitive, a natural gift rather than a wyrric one, and Fenton saw the young man’s gaze soften.
“How are you doing? Truth.” Thad spoke softly.
“Truth?” Fenton met his gaze. “Not good.”
“Tell me how I can help.” Thad’s gaze was level, his practicality and good heart showing.
Fenton laid his left arm upon the desk, massaging around the edges of one bracer carefully. “Unless you can turn all the wyrria in the world back off again, Thad, I’m not sure there’s much anyone can do. I’m starting to think Leith’s gifts were more of a curse than I’d ever thought. That maybe wyrria is more of a curse than anyone knows.”
“And yet you rebuilt this entire palace,” Thad held Fenton’s gaze, earnest. “Single-handedly, with wyrria.”
“The Jenners did the carvings, and Morvein helped.”
“Partly.” A wry smile touched Thad’s lips now. “But you were the instigation behind it. Conflict may ride your soul, Fenton, and manifest in those magnificent hands,” Thad nodded at the bracers, “but it’s not the only thing you are. I watched Queen Elyasin and King Therel transform from the power of the Brother King’s wyrria during my time beneath the Kingsmountains, but do you know the one thing it never did?”
“What’s that?” Fenton took the bait.
“It never transformed them into different people.” Thad held Fenton’s gaze. “They were still good-hearted, regal, willing to risk everything to save their nations. I know you worry that your wyrria is cursed, but I don’t think that’s true. I’ve seen cursed wyrria; I’ve seen what it did to proud Giannyk warriors, trapped forever under the mountains because a truly cursed wyrria changed them into something terrible. Something that should never again see the light of day. And you – you’re not that. Just like Elyasin and Therel weren’t.”
Fenton took a deep breath. “But hurling off my Wolf and Dragon power is the only way I have to calm it since magic opened back up in the world, despite all our searching through this library for some other answer. My wyrria loves conflict, it wants battle – and if I don’t feed it, things get bad.”
Thad looked at him, his gaze direct. “Don’t you think there’s something in all of this searching through Leith’s books that you’re missing, sir?”
“What do you mean?” Fenton frowned; clearly the young Castellan was getting at something and Fenton was obtuse to it.
“I mean, talking to someone who was alive when wyrria last was open on the earth. Someone like the Giannyk Bhorlen, maybe?”
“I told you, Thad, I don’t know how to get back to Bhorlen’s ice-citadel.” Fenton gave the young man a level gaze. “Otherwise I would be there now, picking his brain for answers. And no matter how I try picturing either that place or the White Tower in my mind when I step up to any Alranstone, I never wind up there. It’s like those places are protected by a deeper wyrria than the Alranstones can access. Something far older than Leith was ever party to.”
“Then maybe Morvein’s the person you need.”
Fenton took a deep breath, then let it out slow. “Morvein and I are… not speaking. Besides, she’s at the Elsthemi border, trying to contain the chaos from the Valley of Doors opening back up.”
“So why aren’t you there, sir, helping?” Thad’s gaze was penetrating. “No one knows rune and sigil-binding like Morvein. No one living, anyway, besides Bhorlen. She learned at the master’s feet, Fenton. She learned the same things Leith did.”
“Morvein wouldn’t teach me the things she knows.”
“But she might help you,” Thad spoke, his gaze all too knowing. “Old lovers and all that.”
Fenton went very still. His gaze tracked up, meeting Thad’s. “Who told you that?”
“No one had to tell me.” Thad’s gaze was gentle. “You were the only person she saved when the White Ring exploded eight hundred years ago and killed everyone else, including Theos den’Alrahel, the first Rennkavi candidate. You were the only person she saved, Fenton. Not Hahled Ferrian, not Delman. I saw her eyes upon you at Darkwinter Fest, watching you from the shadows. I put two and two together. But because Elohl twists for his lost lover Ghrenna in her body, you’ve stayed away from her rather than find her and ask for help.”
“It’s complicated.” Fenton murmured, something deep and hot coiling through him. Inhaling a breath, he closed his eyes. In his mind, he could see Morvein; a flash of dark cerulean eyes, the elegant sweep of her throat. As if she saw him from afar, he felt her turn in his mind, dark lashes lifting to watch him. Fenton let out a slow breath, banishing the vision, shutting it down inside a cocoon of fire that he used against mind-scrying.
But she had seen him, and he had seen her – as easy as it had ever been between them.
As easy as it had once been between Ghrenna and Elohl.
“I can’t go to Morvein.” Fenton spoke softly, opening his eyes. “We’ll just have to find another solution, Thad.”
“I think that’s a bad answer, sir.” Thaddeus rose to his lean-muscled height. Rubbing his fingertips over the scroll on the desk as if he might say something more, he finally gave a sad smile, then rapped the desk with his knuckles. “Up to the Soldier’s Ball? I have a few last things to prepare with the Palace staff, but I’ll be there if you’d like to continue our conversation.”
“No.” Fenton smiled. “Although I do think drinking is in order tonight. Shall we go up?”
“Indeed.” Thad stepped toward the vaulted ingress of the reading-alcove. He reached the archway and stepped through a long hall of shelves to the exit. Moving out just behind Thad, Fenton turned, setting one hand to the wall beside the vaulted library opening. Taking a deep breath, his gaze strayed to the tableau of the fighting Wolf and Dragon inside their ring of flame carved in enormous relief on the inner wall of the foyer.
Locked in their ever-battle, they seemed to mock him with their gazes – knowing he could never run from his wyrric legacy.
The Deephouse cavern behind Fenton breathed with silence as he closed his eyes and sent a pulse of Wolf and Dragon energy through the stone, a combination of heat and lightning that ripped through his veins like wildfire. The air crackled around him, though he was able to channel most of his magics into the stone, even without removing his bracers. In a fluid wave, blue-white runes lit all along the arch, curls of wyrric vapor flowing in from the arch to the empty center. Sigils flashed and gradually the vapor condensed to a milky substance that shivered through with Fenton’s lightning, obscuring the beasts on the far wall. Gradually, that milky substance condensed to solid bluestone – the arch and door vanishing as if they had never been.
The cavern breathed with silence; a solid, unmarked bluestone wall before Fenton now.
“So that’s how it’s done, securing Leith’s library.”
The basso growl from the natural stone bridge of the Deephouse behind them hammered a wave of shock through Fenton. He whirled fast, twin gouts of fire already in his hands, his entire body prickling with snarl and heat. He hadn’t heard them, hadn’t sensed them – and now it was too late. Thad stood to one side, longknives out in a fighting crouch, but one glance at the intruders upon the bluestone bridge in the massive cavern told Fenton Thad’s blades were useless.
Silver studs of herringbone-weave armor glinted in a vague light filtering down through the cavern as the waning day set beyond the cavern’s ceiling. Enormous longswords rode the backs of five black-clad men, hoods up and faces shrouded in the gloom. As Fenton surged with wrath, glancing down to see the ten Palace Guardsmen who protected the Deephouse bleeding out at the base of the bridge, the twin flames in his hands sparked to white surges of wyrric vapor. If Fenton’s lightning could sublimate sand, his vapor-strikes could melt a man in moments.
And moments might be all he had, if the Kreth-Hakir Brethren decided to attack.
“Peace, Scion of Alodwine,” the man at the front spoke in his deep, boulder-cracking voice. “We’re not here to kill you, nor the Queen’s Castellan. Only to deliver a message from our lord and High Master Magnus Yesh.”
“And what words could your master ever have that might interest me?” Fenton snarled. Passion surged in his veins; fury roared in his heart to hear Magnus’ name. If there was one man he hated more in his long and varied life, he couldn’t say who. Magnus’ title grated on Fenton’s ears like fingernails on chalk, and he bristled. “Make one false move, Hakir Scorpion, and I will blast you apart from your asshole up.”
The man’s thick lips smiled. The obviously Unaligned man was taller than the others by a foot, broad like a mountain, a heavy war-axe riding his back instead of a broadsword. Lifting ungloved hands thick with muscle, he raised them slowly, showing Fenton he wasn’t going for a weapon. With a gentleness that didn’t match those enormous hands, he touched the edges of his leather hood and cast it back. And bared the one face Fenton hated more than death.
A face riven with white scars from a dragon’s raking talons.
“Hello, old friend,” High Master Magnus Yesh of the Kreth-Hakir Brethren smiled, his empty eye sockets crinkled with amusement. “Have you missed me?”
Copyright 2020 Jean Lowe Carlson LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this content may be reproduced or distributed without permission from the author.
