Elevation of the Marked (The Marked Series Book 2) (30 page)

She took his face in her hand, her eyes met his with tenderness. “It is the same for me.”
 

And then their lips met, and Charlem truly did feel as if he were flying. He was suffused with heat and joy and a sense of completeness. The kind of instant that defines a lifetime.

Charlem strolled through the marketplace, enjoying the rare cool day. The crowds parted before him, though after so many years as a Tree Guard he barely took notice.

“Master Chi’santae,” the butcher called, “I have, for you, excellent cuts this day. A sirloin so tender it will make you weep.”

Charlem laughed. “With all my heart, I would that I could, but my wife has insisted we reduce our red meat. She says it is bad for my heart.”

The butcher shook his head, baffled. “Madness! Why, a man such as yourself needs animal flesh; it keeps the back straight and the mind sharp.”

“I wholly agree, but I’ve been sent for fish and am not a brave enough man to return with anything else.” He bowed. “Good day.”

Charlem moved on, chuckling to himself. He’d have fun teasing Jae-In with the butcher’s words later. As he approached the fish market, a familiar face caught his attention. “Denrick?”

His old friend, much aged since their last meeting, turned at the sound of his name. “Charlem,” he said, sounding confused. He glanced around him, his forehead creasing.

Charlem closed the gap between them and embraced his old mate with a hearty slap on the back. Denrick returned the gesture somewhat awkwardly.
 

“Why did you not write to say you were coming, you old rascal?”

“Ah, well, you know how it is…”

“You’ll join us for dinner, I hope. Jae-In will be happy to see you.” Denrick took a step back, and Charlem realized something was amiss. “Is everything alright?”

His friend cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Charlie. Truly, I am.”
 

“Sorry for what, exactly?” Charlem asked, his voice turning cool. “You can’t mean you’ve joined Herrene and his thugs?”
 

Denrick took another step backwards. “You had better take your wife and your kid and get out of Nerra, Charlie. It’s only going to get worse from here.” And then Charlem heard it: the tolling of the Chi’santae bell—a baleful, resonant knell—the battle call, the warning that the Confluence was in danger. A sound that had not been heard in hundreds of years. “Too late.”

In his shock, he took his eyes off Denrick—an error. His old friend struck him hard in the side of the head. Pain exploded from his temple. In the strange moment before unconsciousness, before he fell to the street, he heard Derrick say, “For your own good.”

And then he collapsed, senseless.

Charlem came to with a start. Someone had pushed him to the side of the road, and by the lightness of his belt, had taken his purse for good measure.
 

The ringing of the bell had ceased. The light had dimmed, the day grown cooler as night approached. Charlem’s chest tightened with fear.
How much time has passed?
He pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the ache in his head, and took off at a sprint, weaving in and out of the crowded streets, just as he had done as a boy.
 

He darted up the road until he came to the Temple stables. He cursed when he saw the empty stall where Jae-In’s horse should be—she had not waited for him. Of course she had not, though they were weaker apart.
Foolish woman
.
 

Charlem rode out of Nerra as if the Spiritblighter itself were on his tail, though some part of him knew he was late, he was far too late.
 

He dismounted before reaching the Confluence and made the last of the trek on foot. The stairway which seemed to lead nowhere, the entryway to the Confluence, was strewn with bodies. Charlem’s stomach heaved as his eyes locked onto the still form of Godderd, one of the first Chi’santae he had ever met. His light blue eyes pointed sightlessly at the sky, his once-white tabard darkened with blood.

Charlem darted up the stairway, scanning the bodies as he went, searching for the face of his wife and praying not to find her. He mounted the last step and leapt into the Confluence.
 

The smell of smoke choked him. He fell to his knees, tears of helplessness rolling down his cheeks.
 

It was afire—the Confluence was burning. The connection between the Spirit world and his own, the thing he had sworn his life to protect. The leaves had all turned to ash, the blackened branches smoked and crumbled. The trunk glowed red in places, like a sinister constellation, the embers not yet burnt out.

Failed. They had failed
.

Around him, his brothers and sisters lay dead. There had been twenty-five Chi’santae that morning, fifty individuals devoted to the preservation of the Confluence. Now there were none. Nor was there anything left to protect.

It did not take long for him to find her.

She lay not far from the Confluence, her head turned so that her dark eyes, open and unseeing, faced the smoldering tree. White ash coated her form, freckled her dark hair like unclean snow. Her skin was cold to the touch.
 

Long gone. She was long gone.

“Jae-In.” Charlie sobbed, shaking her corpse as if to rouse her from sleep. “My
bevolder
.” He collapsed, pressing his face to her bloody tabard, and wept against her silent breast. He choked on his grief, on his self-loathing, and could not have said how long he remained. Without the rise and fall of the sun for a guide, it may well have been days. And days in the Confluence would be many weeks in the real world.

“Charlem.”

He heard his name and closed his eyes tighter. It had sounded like his wife, which could only mean he’d gone insane.
 

“Charlem,” the voice repeated.
 

Reluctantly, he looked up. “Jae-In?”
 

She was standing beside him, and for a blissful instant he thought there had been some mistake, that she had not died. Until he noticed that she lacked solidity, that she cast no shadow, that her corpse still sprawled at his side. It was her spirit, which could only remain for a time.

She brought a hand to his cheek, and it was as if a breeze caressed him.
 

He closed his eyes, his throat contracting painfully. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was meant to be this way, I think,” she said.

His eyelids flew open and he gestured to the charred husk of the Confluence, to their brethren dead at his feet. “Like
this
?”
 

She glanced down at her own body and seemed to take a deep breath. “All endings are also beginnings. Herenne was a fool—he thought he could destroy the Confluence, he thought he could end the Chi’santae.”
 

“But…he did.”

“No, my love. It is not possible to truly destroy the Confluence. It has moved.” Her hand that was not a flesh-and-blood hand gestured to his chest. “It is here now.”

He peeked down at his own chest and saw nothing remarkable. “I don’t—”

“The Confluence is in you now, Charlie. You will need to learn how to access it, but it is there.”

“And when I die, what then?”
 

Jae-In seemed to fade a bit and his heartbeat quickened—he feared the end of this conversation, feared it would mark the last time he would hear her voice, see her face. “To honor the sacrifice made here, the Company of Spirits have promised to commemorate this day each year. They will choose fifty mortals, the fifty young people who have the greatest potential to make a difference in the world. They will be marked as Confluences, so that they might carry the communion between our worlds with them as a sign to mankind that the Spirits cannot be silenced. You will need to find them, Charlie, you will need to teach them our culture. Without you, so much will be lost.”
 

Charlem shook his head, his shoulders sagging. “I can’t…I can’t do anything without you.”

She reached up her hand as if to cup his face and he closed his eyes, tried to feel her touch. “You and I are forever connected. Where you go, so goes my spirit. What you do is my doing as well. Do it for me, Charlie, and I will wait for you.”

He sobbed helplessly, but nodded. He could deny this woman nothing, he never could. “How will I know them—these Confluences?”

“They will be marked.”

16

Bray squinted into the mist and leaned against the wooden railing, letting the sea-spray pepper her cheeks. Her chin-length hair whipped about her face, apparently determined to obstruct her view. She swatted at the ill-behaved mop, and, for good measure, puffed out her cheeks and blew at the strands as if extinguishing a candle.

A sedge of white cranes erupted from the curling fog, near at hand, long necks and legs extended in graceful linearity. Bray tracked them with her eyes. Oddly, she thought of Yarrow—of how he would appreciate such a sight. She looked at them as if through his eyes, and felt a momentary swell in her chest; a wonder of nature she would normally overlook.

She heard Su-Hwan speaking in rapid Chaskuan and turned to the sound. The petite girl stood beside the captain of the ship, an old man with a wispy beard that could easily have tucked into a belt, had he worn a belt—or trousers for that matter. Instead, he sported a traditional Chaskuan garment reminiscent of Cosanta robes.
 

He caught Bray’s eye and bowed his head in her direction. In his hand, an old-fashioned pipe the length of a short sword emitted smoke in a meandering column. His vessel, too, was in the old style of the north, with a flat, pinewood keel, its sails tightly woven squares of cattail ribbed by bamboo braces. He and his crew seemed men out of time to Bray, like figures in old stories of far-off places.
 

They passed through yet another cluster of minute, forested islands in the Chaskuan archipelagos. Bray studied them through the haze, wondering if they were inhabited, wondering what life would be like in such a secluded place. This area was home to many strange things—unrecognizable vegetation, strange beasts she’d only ever seen in zoos.
 

“Cap’n says we’re nearly there.” Bray jumped at the sound of Peer’s voice so unexpectedly close to her ear. He’d made himself scarce long enough that she’d begun to wonder—the ship wasn’t
that
big.
 

He chuckled and bumped his shoulder against hers. “’S only me.”
 

Bray squinted up at him, at his face which seemed to be growing steadily more haggard beneath its tawny tangle of beard. “Have you been drinking with the crew?”

His gaze flicked away from hers and he squared his shoulders, tugging on the cuff of his sleeve. “No.”

“Then why is your speech slurred?” she challenged.
 

“’S not.”

She eyed him with concern, her mouth turned down. “There is something you aren’t telling me, Peer. Why don’t you just spit it out?” She paused to take a breath and alter her tone. “You’ve been acting so strange lately. You’re really making me worry.”

She braced herself for the sharp side of his tongue. Peer was never fond of being offered unsolicited advice. Instead, when he turned to her his eyes had a glassy, unfocused look, his mouth hooked into a lazy smile. “No need to be worrying. I’m jus’ fine.”

Bray opened her mouth to point out that, the night before last, she had discovered him in earnest conversation with an overturned crate, but was cut off by a single-syllable command from the captain—a sound which seemed to serve many purposes in Chaskuan, but apparently in this scenario meant ‘ahoy.’

The mist thinned enough for Bray to make out the shape of an island, far larger than any they had passed in the preceding days—Jedoh, an island port town and their destination.
 

The booted feet of crewmen pounded on the deck, commands called in words unintelligible to Bray. She studied the approaching harbor, the docks packed tightly with merchant stalls and foot traffic. The crowds themselves were a patchwork of culture and class. She had never been to Jedoh, but could see instantly that its reputation as the melting pot of Trinitas was apt. She sought the crisp blue uniforms of constables and Elevated, but could make out little in such a milling hive of colorful garb.
 

Su-Hwan stepped up to Bray’s side, her dark fathomless eyes scanning the harbor. “He will have sent some here.”

Bray frowned, puzzled by her certainty. While she thought an Elevated presence in Jedoh not
un
likely, it hardly seemed a given. “We’ll just have to be careful, then. But why here?”
 

“He is seeking the remaining Chisanta. Presuming them on the move and not knowing their terminus, he will have focused on junctions rather than destinations.”

“You seem to really know his mind.”

Su-Hwan swiveled a bland face in her direction. “His methods, yes. They are highly logical. His underlying motivation I cannot speak to.”

As the crew cast anchor and prepared to dock, Bray popped below deck to retrieve their luggage. She unfurled their map and angled it into the column of sunlight pouring through the porthole. The eastern half of the island was a densely packed network of streets, bursting with hotels ranging from high-class to seedy, restaurants and shops, brothels and fish markets—all of the usual offerings of a port town. The west, however, was mountainous and sparsely populated. It was there, she’d learned, that a Dalish couple lived in seclusion, but were known to take in art students.