The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) (25 page)

Kora said, “The innkeeper knows who I am. I’ll say more later, right now we need to get out of here.”

The prince let his companions in his room. “No need to rush,” he said. “She doesn’t seem the type….”

“Did you hear what Kora said?” Kansten hissed. Lanokas sighed. While he gathered a few scattered possessions, Kora rooted through their cash supply. They had more than enough to cover the night’s stay, and she laid six silver coins on the end table.

When the Leaguesmen had packed, which they did in all haste, Kora transported them to the fork in the dirt path they had taken from the little dock the day before, one branch leading to a farmhouse, the other to the road from the ferry. The path, for the most part, had dried overnight. Only patches still were muddy, and those were clearly visible.

“Come on,” Kora said, and started off. They went single file to avoid the puddles. Kansten, last in line, pulled Lanokas back and tapped the sorceress to make her turn her head.

“What the hell happened at that inn?”

“I’ll explain as we go. Let’s get out of here.”

She told them about getting up early, which made Kansten shake her head; about leaving the inn, at which point Lanokas narrowed his eyes in disapproval; about Teena finding her, and what the woman had said about Ilana and the guardsman. “She knew me, I look a lot like my mother. Sound like her too. The question is what she’ll do with the information. She may just have been trying to help, but I….”

Lanokas assured her, “Caution’s good. It’s necessary. But if she wanted to turn you in, why didn’t she send for a soldier last night? She knew you right away, she had to.”

Kansten said, “Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she wanted to talk to Kora first, make absolutely sure. The army doesn’t like false alarms.”

They reached the cobblestone path that led to Teena’s, and took the opposite direction this time, moving west. Lanokas said it connected in a few short miles with the main road, the road that crossed the Podra via bridge to head to Partsvale and its Shrine of the Giver and Pool of Healing. They stopped talking to stay alert, but met no one before the juncture. Half an hour later, some horses came up behind them at a gallop; the Leaguesmen stepped aside, since no cover was in sight, and the fifteen people who rode past ignored them. Pilgrims.

Three hours after the encounter, the Leaguesmen left the road and turned toward the mountains that dominated the northern skyline. The ground rose and fell in rocky hills that grew progressively taller and steeper. What looked like a forest lay to the northwest, and they walked that way, stopping to eat on the far side of a slope. As Kora sat down she dislodged a piece of parchment from her pocket, and it fell to the ground, Lanokas almost stepping on it.

“That isn’t mine,” said Kora, when Lanokas offered it to her. It was sealed with wax, like a letter, but unaddressed.

“It fell out of your dress.”

“Maybe the innkeep slipped it in this morning,” said Kansten.

“When we were walking back to the house,” Kora realized. She nearly tore the parchment she was so quick to pull it open, holding it so no one else would see.

Please, Kora, don’t be alarmed when you find this. If I don’t find a way to slip my name to you, I’m Teena Unsten. My family’s owned this inn for years, for generations.

As soon as I saw you, I knew you were the daughter of an old classmate named Ilana—you resemble her remarkably, your lower face does. Your hair’s bushier than I remember hers, but your curls are just as tight. From a soldier who stayed here last week, I know you turned down some kind of offer from Zalski. What the man wanted from you, whether you’re on the run or moving this way with a purpose, I don’t know. Your mother was always kind to me, and if I can do something in her name to help you, just say the word. I bet you have your reasons—and it’s smart, Kora, please remember—not to trust unknown people. Maybe my old friendship with Ilana will be enough to make me less of a stranger than most you’ll meet in these unfamiliar parts.

I don’t believe in coincidences. I don’t imagine chance brought you to my door. Whatever you choose to confide or to keep from me, please know I’ll do all I can to hide, protect, and help you. Someone who defied Zalski deserves nothing less. I can’t imagine for the life of me how you did that—if I didn’t hear it from Zalski’s man I don’t think I’d believe it possible. I hope to hear your story one day, from you. Until we meet again, may the Giver, the God of all this Earth, keep you one of his own. I hope you found some comfort beneath my roof.

Kora read the letter twice through, feeling guiltier than ever. “Until we meet again….” She could not fathom the chain of events that would bring her back to Fontferry, or carry Teena south. Still, she had acted as she must. Surely Teena would not be offended; the innkeeper’s own words showed she realized Kora’s situation was delicate.

The secrecy inherent in the League was almost callous. Sedder had noticed. He had suffered from it, the fate of his parents kept from him, Kora herself a party to the deed, and now this.

It was one blow too many. A single tear slid down Kora’s face. She tried to wipe it without anyone seeing, but Lanokas was watching. For once he did not pry; he asked nothing. Kora put the letter away and said, “Let’s eat.”

Their meal consisted of stale bread with overripe apples and some nuts Kansten had saved, since they would keep, until the food stores were otherwise depleted. No one spoke much as they ate. They were so close to their journey’s object that as Kora peered up into the mountains she half-expected to see the outline of stone walls—but for all that, they still had a path to find, a task Kora suspected would be harder than Petroc let on. The search could take days, weeks, and they were nearly out of food. Kora could always use the transport spell to return to Fontferry, to buy provisions, but right now she hoped never to see the town again. She could not face Teena after slipping away like she had done.

After lunch they were off, continuing toward the clump of trees in the distance that rapidly turned into a wood so dense there was no going through it. They followed its edge westward, hoping they were moving in the right general direction. And then Kora saw it, but only as she walked past: a clear, grassy lane leading to the heart of the wood, a route as wide as the main road and better tended than the forest path between Kora’s home and Hogarane, though there was not a living person for twenty miles. Perhaps—Kora knew the explanation was true as she thought it—perhaps the spells of those long dead maintained the trail.

The sorceress halted, staring at the lane. Lanokas and Kansten took a few steps past her, then turned around. Kansten narrowed her eyes. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Are you ill? Why are you stopping?”

“Why am I…? Kansten, don’t you see it?”

Kansten glanced all around. At one point she stared straight at the opening in the trees, but took no notice. Lanokas did the same, looking dumbfounded.

“See what?” Kansten asked.

“The path!”

Kora’s companions shared a concerned glance. “I think she’s feverish,” said Kansten.

“Kora,” said Lanokas, “there’s no path there.”

“Three yards in front of you. Right in front of me. At least four feet wide.”

Kansten said, “The forest is solid, a great mass of brown.”

Lanokas asked, “Are you feeling all right? Maybe we should rest a while.”

“I’M FINE. It…. How can you not see it, it’s right there! Look….” Kora tromped a few steps up to the path. “Here.”

Kansten bit her lip. Lanokas spoke hesitantly. “You’re pointing at a wall of trees,” he told the sorceress.

Kora stared at them, incensed. Then she marched five feet in the ankle-high grass before she turned to see Lanokas looking relieved and Kansten gaping like an idiot.

“The trees,” Kansten said. “You’re standing in the middle of a tree. Lanokas, have I lost…?”

“You’re perfectly sane. I see what you see.”

This was getting ridiculous. “How could I walk through trees?” snapped Kora. “How could you see me if I had? Wouldn’t they block me?”

Lanokas said, “They would if they existed.”

Kansten turned on her heel. “What the hell do you mean, if they existed? They’re in front of your face. You just said you can see them!”

“I see them,” Lanokas explained, “because I’m not a sorcerer. That doesn’t mean they’re real.” He followed Kora out into the path. Understanding dawned on Kansten, softened her face, and she joined them.

“Is this the first test?” she asked.

Kora said, “I don’t think so. It’s just a clever way to hide the path from people who have no business finding it.”

Kansten crossed her arms. “You honestly don’t see trees?”

“I see a grassy lane. It cuts pretty straight, but I’d better lead.”

The path ran for miles through the forest. It rose and fell with the hills, twisting before it met its end at a cave at the foot of the mountains.

“I guess we go in,” said Kansten.

“Let me get the torch,” said Lanokas.

445

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Towards the Hall

From where the Leaguesmen stood, the cave looked black as pitch and just as heavy in its darkness. Kora lit the torch Lanokas had toted from Yangerton, and before the others could stop her, stepped inside.

Her flame fizzled as it crossed into the mountain, but that caused Kora no distress. In fact, a burning torch would have ruined the sobering effect of the chamber within. Ancient magic must have blocked the lanterns’ glow from entering the outside world; they hung on the walls unlike any lamps she had ever seen, foot-high glass sculptures of men and women in robes like Petroc’s that all shone a self-sustaining, balmy yellow. The cave was spherical, so that only a thin strip of ground down the center was flat, covered with a violet rug that ran to the opposite side of the chamber, where a boulder as tall as Kora blocked the way forward. A gentle intake of breath from behind told her Kansten had followed her in. Lanokas said, “What now?”

“Now,” said Kora, a little testily—he had ruined the majesty of the moment—“we move the boulder. My guess is only spells of a certain strength will do the trick.”

Kansten’s smile looked ghostly, shadowed by the luminous foot-tall figure behind her. “I bet a spell from the
Librette
would work,” she said. “How about the one to disintegrate walls?”

Lanokas spun her around. “Wait just a minute,” he said. “You read the book? They wouldn’t let me touch it!”

Kansten put a hand on her hip. “I believe I found the book.”

“Now is not the time!” cried Kora. “I need to try that spell, and I need to concentrate. Stand back,” she directed. Then, “On second thought….”

She took a step back as well, handed the prince his torch, and grabbed both Kansten and Lanokas’s hands before conjuring her crimson shell around the three of them. “I don’t know what this magic’s capable of. Ready?”

“We’re ready,” said Lanokas.

“
Polvassay
.”

The boulder vanished, collapsed with a weak explosion to a dust pile, revealing a tunnel two feet high and two feet wide when the air cleared. Kora’s protective shell dissipated.

             
Kansten quipped, “That was disappointing.”

“I’ll go first,” said Lanokas.

“No you won’t!” Kora held him back.

“That boulder has to reform at some point. That very well may be when the first person goes through.”

Lanokas crawled into the tunnel. Immediately, an enchanted wind swept the chamber where the women stood, swirling the newly formed pile of dust, shaping it back into the boulder it had been. Kora trembled, with no shame that Kansten noticed. “I’ve never seen magic like this,” she said.

“Well, who knows what magic you just sealed Lanokas in with.”

“Right. Let me raise that shield….
Polvassay
.”

The boulder crumbled again in a dense, choking cloud; once more, when Kansten cleared the tunnel’s entrance, a sudden wind reformed the debris, closing her away. Kora took a deep breath, repeated the process, and followed on her hands and knees.

The passage sloped upward, but the rocky floor was enchanted so that, though cold, it felt like no rock Kora had ever touched. It was soft, padded, and the fifty yards she crawled only felt uncomfortable when her back began to ache. A hairpin turn hid Kansten, but Kora heard her moving forward, and she followed the tunnel’s twists until she was not quite sure what direction she faced in relation to the entrance.

More glowing statues lit both the tunnel and the chamber beyond, a large, triangular area; its three sloping walls rose to a point high above the ground. A tapestry hung on the left, black, with a poem of white words woven in the thread. Kansten and Lanokas were examining it, Kansten’s brow furrowed in concentration, as always when she tried to read. Rubbing the small of her back, Kora joined them. She could have done nothing else had she wanted to; the only way in or out was through the tunnel she just exited.

“Read it out loud, one of you,” said Kansten. “This’ll take me forever.” Lanokas obliged.

To you who seek our Hallowed Hall,

We make one fact quite clear.

We commit ourselves to justice;

Our priorities are tiered.

Three loyalties we know and weigh,

Represented by three stones:

The crystal, ruby, greenest jade,

You must profess to own.

Crystal for our gracious king,

We are his subjects true.

If bribes to blind our eyes you bring,

‘Tis he you answer to.

Let ruby be your warning dire:

It shows us full of pride.

With faith in self as in our sire,

From self we never hide.

The jade, as green as hill or glen,

Will show we shall be free

As any squirrel or bee or wren

That flits amongst the trees.

Your task is this: to take the gems

Of freedom, king, and pride,

Prioritize them for yourself

And by their justice bide.

The three Leaguesmen stood for a moment, staring at the tapestry. Kora shut her eyes to think, and found she could not concentrate.

“How in the world do we do this?”

“Take it one at a time,” said Kansten. “Crystal, well, all right, it makes sense to have that symbolize the king. The kings’ statues at the Palace are in crystal, aren’t they? And the poem explained the jade. It’s green, like nature. Represents freedom. What gets me is the connection between pride and the ruby.”

Kora said, “It’s not selfish pride, not arrogance. It’s knowing what you owe yourself, upholding your dignity. It’s heart and pluck, as trite as that sounds. People show hearts as red, I guess because blood’s red…. No, I get the gems and what they mean. I don’t understand how a mental task is going to let us onward.”

“We touch the stones in order,” said Lanokas.

“What stones?” said Kansten. Lanokas pointed to his right.

The women turned to the wall that had neither a tunnel nor a tapestry, to find it no longer blank: three stones, placed in a triangle, had appeared there, a jagged quartz crystal on top. The bottom left was an oval-shaped ruby, with perfect, glinting facets. To its right was a square-cut piece of jade, scratched and worn.

“This is a good task,” said Lanokas. “In the old days, sorcerers to come through here would have left with a pretty good notion of how the Councilors would react to them. We just have to think like the Court would.”

Kora said, “The Court didn’t exactly stand by its values. How many of them sided with Hansrelto? Nearly half.”

“We have no way to know how many went with him. No reliable accounts. Brenthor and Mayven opposed him, there’s no doubt of that.”

Kansten rolled her eyes. “Do we press the stones from least to greatest, or the other way around? And what happens if we choose wrong? That’s what I want to know.”

Lanokas looked at her. “We’ll find out when it happens.”

The prince’s calm amazed Kora. She herself was staring at the jewels, remembering her nightmare about a collapsing ceiling and wondering whether it had not been some kind of premonition.

“Clearly,” said Kansten, and Kora brought herself back to the moment, “clearly the crystal’s least. No offense, Lanokas….”

Lanokas held up a hand in surrender. “Hypotheticals matter here. Hypothetically, a rightfully born monarch could abuse his power. If loyalty to a king were to violate someone’s liberty, or oppose human decency….”

“I agree,” said Kora. “So we have something, at least. The crystal’s third. What’s first, then? The jade? I say the ruby.”

“The ruby,” agreed Lanokas.

Kansten said nothing. She studied the tunnel entrance, ignoring the others’ patient stares. Freedom was everything to her; Kora remembered her swearing she would kill herself rather than be captured. She had looked wild then and seemed fairly cornered now, the same blazing determination taut within her limbs. She spoke without looking at the others.

“The ruby. It’s the ruby. Go on, Kora, touch it. Greatest to least, we’ll go greatest to least.”

Kora tapped the ruby with her index finger; it glowed for a moment, filled the chamber with a soft red light reminiscent of sunset. Kansten then covered the jade completely with her palm. A green sparkle escaped from the cracks between her fingers. Kora nodded to Lanokas, who touched the crystal with the edge of his torch, and an explosion of pure white light left them all momentarily sightless. A few seconds after the flash, and with the aid of many squints and blinkings, Kora saw that all three stones had disappeared. In their place was a circular doorway she would have to duck to fit through.

Kora led the way into a passage that wound upward and around itself, in a wide but narrowing spiral. The air soon turned heavy and stale.

“I don’t like this,” said Kansten.

Lanokas told her, “We’re moving deeper in the mountain. No reason to be spooked, not yet. I’ll worry when the lights go out.”

They were rounding a curve when he spoke. As if on cue, the statue-lamps behind them darkened while the faint glow of those ahead vanished with a pop; the ensuing blackness was almost palpable. Kora’s heart pounded in her ears so that she barely heard Lanokas bark, “Don’t move.”

“You had to say that,” Kansten groaned. “You had to mention the light.”

Kora’s voice was high and squeaky. “You’re not helping!”

“I have the torch,” said Lanokas, “take it.”

Kora groped in the direction of his voice. Her hand brushed the prince’s, and she took the torch. “I can’t see,” she said. “I can’t see a blasted thing, I can’t light it.”

“Just try,” Kansten pleaded.

Kora ran her hand over the pitch-covered stick, remembering its shape, its texture. She formed a mental image. Then she whispered, “
Fwaig Commenz
.”

The torch lit. Not brightly, to be sure, but enough to show three or four feet ahead. The distance varied as Kora’s trembling arm made the light dance.

“Thank God,” whispered Kansten. Strange, it seemed appropriate to whisper. The flicker of light was eerier to Kora’s mind than the darkness had been.

They walked slowly, side by side with Kora in the middle, letting the torch illuminate a spot quite clearly before they took another step. They progressed thus for a quarter mile, the smell of dirt, of sweat, growing stronger with each step before the waning torchlight fell on two of the strangest creatures Kora had ever imagined, much less seen.

They were three heads taller than the average male, with leathery, crimson-hued skin stretched tight over a thick torso and muscular limbs. Their noses were long and thin to varying degrees, as were their ears, which protruded straight up from oval-shaped heads: though to be fair, the head of the shorter was a bit more round. They had large black eyes that seemed to sparkle and slack, toothy mouths, and their lengths of black hair looked matted. Their clothes, made from animal pelts, were ragged but fit their powerful frames. They stood only three feet from the humans, in the middle of the path.

             
Lanokas moved to draw his sword. Without tearing her eyes from the trolls—for trolls they were, Kora recognized them from her children’s books—she grabbed the prince’s forearm as his fingers closed on the hilt.

“They haven’t threatened us.”

The taller troll, the one with the oval-shaped head, chuckled to himself, a deep, booming sound. He had an air of authority about him and spoke with a voice deeper than any man’s.

“Haven’t forgotten you’re the invaders here, have you? That’s lucky.”

Three sharp pops sounded from behind. Kora spun around to see that three more trolls had appeared at their backs, blocking their exit.

“You sorcerers are not the only ones who turn invisible. You walked right past them.” The tall troll laughed again, and went on, “Human magic has no effect on us. A man this year came through here, he made himself invisible thinking we wouldn’t see him. Surprised, he was, when we called out.”

Petroc. He was talking about Petroc; the trolls must have let him go in the end. There was a chance, then, they would do the same now. With the relief of that thought Kora found she could speak, though there was a pleading, desperate quality to her voice that nearly made her clam up again.

“We only want to pass through, that’s all, we had no idea we were intruding in your caverns. We meant no harm.”

The troll laughed again. “If you had, it matters nothing now. You’re trapped. Still, you sorcerers have helped us in the past. You fought with us to put down the Great Revolt, even when you learned your magic was compromised against the rebels.”

Lanokas broke his silence. “The Troll Revolt really happened?”

All five trolls turned their gaze on him. Their leader narrowed his eyes. “This surprises you?”