The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) (27 page)

“I’ll go with you.”

“I’ll pull you down with me!”

“We’re crossing together. Take a deep breath for me…. Good. A couple more. Now shut your eyes.” Kora did not. She was horribly aware of the wind tossing her hair, flailing her dress behind her, where Lanokas had maneuvered himself, his hands on her shoulders. “I’m going to guide you. Just follow my direction.”

             
She looked back at him. “I’m telling you, I won’t make it!”
             

             
“Do you think I’d let you fall?”

             
“All right,” said Kora. “All right, I trust you.”

             
“Then close your eyes. I said I’ve got you.”

Kora squeezed her lids so tightly little dots popped out in front of her. She tried to ignore the gale, the skirt whipping at her knees, and to concentrate on the pressure Lanokas exerted, once again, on her shoulders.

The first step was the worst, absolute agony. Kora counted to ten before she took it. The second was not quite as bad, but she counted before that one too, and each one after. There was no way to know which shuffle of her feet pushed her body beyond the cliff. She could imagine she still stood on solid rock, and that way, at her own pace, she moved farther and farther from where she started until Lanokas announced, “We made it.”

He had guided her all they way to the opposite cliff. She smiled at him, and he clapped her on the back. Kansten stared at the marble dais, which was so close now its pillar of light looked solid gold.

“You should go first,” she told the sorceress. “When you’re ready.”

“We’re right behind you,” Lanokas offered.

Kora said, “That looks like a transport, we all know where to.”

“Take what time you need,” said the prince.

Kora’s pulse was rapid, her breathing shallow, and she knew that, in the best of circumstances, the change of altitude when she reached the Hall would work against her. To go now would risk passing out before Petroc. For ten minutes she sat, lost in speculation, while Kansten and Lanokas let her have her peace. Her hands were numb and shaking.

We’re here. We’re actually here! I didn’t think we’d make it this far. Whatever happens at the Hall, at least we got there.

Kora looked up at her friends. “Listen, Petroc’s crazy. I’m not exaggerating. The man should be in an asylum. There’s no telling what he’ll do.”

“We’ve handled each challenge up to this point,” said Lanokas. “We’ll do the same here. Are you ready?”

“I won’t feel ready if I stay here for days,” said Kora. “Let’s just do this.” She walked to the golden column, and taking one last moment to prepare herself, crossed into it.

445

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Petroc

The sensation was that of walking through a cascade of water, except the droplets ran off instead of sticking to Kora’s hair, skin, and clothes. Immediately, the expected shortness of breath overcame her. A caustic cold bit her face. She grabbed her chest and looked around; she was standing near the crest of one of the nearby mountains, perhaps the same mountain, with stone ruins rising in front of her. Lanokas appeared at her side, and then Kansten.

Kora had only seen the Hall from its interior. To gaze up at the structure and its accompanying library from outside wiped away any lingering effects of her walk between the cliffs; she felt something akin to reverence, though the sense of belonging she had known the first time Petroc pulled her here and which filled her again standing at the gates was too strong to be truly humble.

“This is it,” Kora whispered. “Watch your step. He could be out here, invisible.”

She led the others, picking her way over a crumbling stone fence covered with rubies placed to mimic blood red vines. Incredibly, or not so incredibly, considering the magic of the ancients, only one gem that she could see had been lost in the standing portion over the course of centuries. The barrier scaled, Kora walked straight into the Hall, through the corner that had collapsed when Hansrelto came to rile the court to rebellion. Hansrelto’s heir stood there now, in the chamber’s center, watching her plow through the rubble. His long, two-toned hair was tied at his neck as always. He wore the same robes as before, and swooped over as soon as he saw Lanokas and Kansten, his eyes so narrow they were slits. The Leaguesmen dropped their sacks, to defend themselves unburdened if an attack came straightaway.

None did. Petroc merely barked at Kora as he approached her in a huff, “I told you to come alone.”

“You wanted me to prove my strength. Well, these people are the greatest strength I have: will ever have,” she specified. “They’d never let me face Zalski without them, and I don’t agree to fight you that way.”

“Are they sorcerers?”

“Only the least barrier tested magic skill, you should know that.”

“The least meaningful, perhaps. Also the most effective. Still, I concede your point. As they’re here, they may do what they can.”

Kora tried to look stoic, but her heart felt light for the first time in days. She had not ruled out the possibility that Petroc might fly into a murderous rage when he saw she brought two companions. In fact, she rather expected as much. She realized now the man was more eccentric than insane, and decided to press her luck. She said, “This will be a friendly fight. A sorcerer like you can judge my abilities without anyone aiming to kill.”

“Well said, Miss Porteg. I wish you success. Nothing would please me more than to find you capable of destroying my brother’s torturer.”

Petroc wore the chain beneath his robes; Kora caught a glimpse of it from behind as he walked the Hall’s central colonnade. Meanwhile, Lanokas and Kansten lined up by either side of their more powerful ally. Kora stared at the sorcerer, considered trying to stun him then and there, but thought better of it. He was testing her integrity, had some protection or plan in place; no way would he give up the necklace that easily. When Petroc turned back to face her, she glared at him to prove she felt no fear. “Ladies first,” he offered.

“
Estatua
!”

Petroc said something unintelligible over Kora’s echo, using one incantation to block her spell with a large white shield and wiping her brain momentarily blank with a second. Lanokas shook her, which helped the effect pass, but that moment of befuddlement was time enough to prevent her deflecting the purple beam Petroc sent to her left, a beam like Zalski had shot outside the Landfill. The jet of light honed in on its target, though Kansten tried to dodge it, and lengthened to bind her the same way Zalski’s had when it made contact with that guardsman. The woman’s struggles only tightened the magical rope; she lost her balance, taken out of the duel before she even entered. As she fell, Lanokas used his telekinesis to sweep Petroc’s feet out from under him and send a chunk of broken pillar flying at his head. The slab of stone careened into the wall, almost collapsing another section of the ruins. The prince fell to his knees from his exertion, but though Petroc had easily redirected his missile, Kora used the precious seconds Lanokas had gained her to vanish Kansten’s bonds.

“A nice trick,” the sorcerer told Lanokas, clambering to his feet. “You exposed it too early.
Lassmagico
!”

Still on the ground, the prince grabbed Kora’s ankle. She crossed her arms before her chest, and a second jet of purple light bounced off her crimson shell and flew back at Petroc, who was far enough away that he just had time to duck. He threw himself to the ground, staring up at his opponents, surprise etched on his face. Kansten reached for her locket, but Kora admonished, “Not yet.” Petroc was too far from the wall. Being blown into it might kill him if he hit it right.

Instead, the sorceress attacked with her own binding spell. A weaker spell.  Petroc stumbled to his feet again, burning her rope of twine to dust as it sped toward him. “You certainly can conjure a shield, Magician.”

“What happened to Miss Porteg?
Kaiga
!”

Petroc leapt aside; Kora’s tripping spell missed him, and he yelled the incantation back from midair. Kora tumbled to the ground, Kansten after her, while a set of arrows came out of nowhere and rushed at Lanokas, who twisted out of their path. They missed him by inches, soaring through the collapsed wall and over the fence. The assault’s severity made Kora cringe. “What’s wrong with you?” she shouted. “We’re not aiming to kill!”

“Yes, that chunk of stone would have merely scraped my face.”

The sorcerers yelled “
Trasporte
” at the same moment, with the result that they switched position. Able to protect only one of her friends, and anticipating an attack against Lanokas due to the stone he had flung, Kora put a silver shield between the prince and his assailant. Kansten, on Petroc’s other side, stood frozen at what must have looked like Kora’s morphing into the enemy. She seemed hesitant to say for certain who was who, whether Petroc was evoking or trying to destroy the shield. Petroc ignored her completely, but his magic was more than strong enough to dissolve, bit by bit, the barrier Kora struggled to maintain in a battle of wills; the effort dropped the sorceress to a knee. “Not again,” she thought as the shield disappeared. “Not someone else.” She stumbled over her tongue, panic getting the best of her, but she had bought Lanokas time to back away and prepare himself. Forgetting his sword, or deeming it better to disarm the enemy as much as possible, he glimpsed a hilt through Petroc’s robes and magicked the man’s dagger into his hand as soon as Kora’s shield was down. At that point, the prince lunged at the sorcerer. Kansten, her doubts removed, bared her teeth and rushed in from the other side.

Petroc barked something, a monosyllable, as Kora scrambled to rise. She screamed the first syllables of
Estatua
before she realized she and Petroc had switched places again, this time not by coincidence. Kansten rammed into her, pushing her against Lanokas’s dagger as they all tumbled. The blade grazed Kora’s cheek, Kansten’s elbow slammed into her chest, and the floor knocked the wind out of her. Lanokas, who landed a yard away, threw himself at Kora; both he and Kansten pulled her arms into position to evoke the crimson shell around them.

“Kora,” cried Kansten, “he’s coming!”

Kora heard her as through a haze. She lifted her head, saw Petroc storming up with an arrogant smirk, and forced out “
Espadara
.”

Petroc stopped short, darted to the right. The sword Kora conjured followed him; before its first slash made contact, the sorcerer created a blade of his own, one he held and swung to deflect the blow. Kora’s sword continued to attack. Kansten and Lanokas launched themselves again at Petroc, who remained occupied with the sword, while Kora, whose head had cleared a bit, yelled, “
Kaiga
!” from where she lay. As Petroc slipped, he vanished the weapon that attacked him. Then he performed the most powerful piece of magic Kora had ever seen.

The spell catapulted Kansten and Lanokas, flinging them twenty feet back. Even Kora, halfway down the room, slid fast across the floor because of the spell’s strength; she cried out as friction burned her leg. Without mercy, without pause, Petroc cast another incantation, one that yanked Kansten from the ground. She hovered stiff and horizontal in midair, her arms stuck to her sides, her knees locked and rigid. She seemed unable to move anything but her head. Lanokas, moaning, looked up at the sound of her shouts. Kora watched in terror, forgetting her searing shin, racking her brain for some way she could help.

Petroc glared at Kansten with murder in his eyes. He marched toward her, passed within inches of a pillar. A pillar as good as any….

Kora’s voice shook as she cried, “
Desfazair!”
She could not undo Petroc’s charm entirely, but she weakened it. Gravity pulled Kansten’s limbs toward the ground. Her arms flailed.

“THE AMULET!” Kora screamed. The echo was heart-stopping. Kansten pulled her arms to her chest, grasping for the stone of jade. She found it as Petroc’s lips began to move.

Due to the vortex’s angle, Petroc missed the pillar. The winds propelled him to the wall beyond, but he fired off a spell as he went: perhaps the same spell that had changed the floor’s texture in the cavern tunnel, for he bounced back as though springs loaded the stone he hit. Kansten’s gust of air caught him and forced him back, pinning him to the ruins. Lanokas, lying in a heap, ripped the chain from the sorcerer’s neck with a gesture while Kora yelled “
Estatua
” for what felt like the fiftieth time. The spell finally hit; Petroc froze, like so many Kora had seen, his skin a sickly shade of gray. The chain flew into Kora’s hand, and Kansten fell with a bone-crushing thud to the marble floor.

“
Kansten
!” Kora ran flat-out to where the woman whimpered, spread-eagled, motionless except for her face, which was beet red and screwed in pain. A line of sweat darkened her forehead.

“It’s my back.”

Kora raised a hand to her mouth. If Kansten were paralyzed…. Kora had no clue how to restore mobility, to heal nerves that would not naturally regenerate.

“Kora, please!”

Kora knelt. “Can you…? Kansten, can you move your fingers?”

“I don’t know.”

Kora cast the spell to heal broken bones, and Kansten let out a gasp of relief, her vertebrae intact. Kora’s stomach gave a jolt as Kansten bent her left knee.

“Stop,” she said, stretching the woman’s leg back out. “That’s good enough, lie still for now. You’ll be all right, I think.” That was when she heard Lanokas groan. She turned her head. “Oh my God!”

Lanokas’s left leg, thirty degrees askew from where it should have been, was one massive bruise, or at least what Kora could see of it through a rip in his pants. His face was as flushed as Kansten’s had been, and displayed no emotion when Kora appeared at his side.

“I think I passed out, after I ripped the chain from him. How bad is it?”

“You don’t want to know. I’ve never seen….”

“Not helping.”

“
Osteocura.
”

The prince’s shattered limb healed. His face was still hot, but his breathing became less shallow. “What did he do to Kansten?” he asked.

             
“He broke her back. I healed it,” Kora told him as he started. “She bent her knee, she isn’t paralyzed.”

             
“And you have…?”

             
Kora showed him the chain. Lanokas propped himself up on his elbows. “Help me stand,” he said.

             
“What!?”

             
“My leg is whole, isn’t it? Though it does resemble an eggplant. Here, let me lean on you.”

             
Distributing his weight between his good leg and Kora’s shoulder, Lanokas rose. Despite a slight limp and a grimace, he made it to where Kansten was trying to sit up.

“Easy!” said Kora. “Take it easy.” She supported Kansten’s back.

“OW! You take it easy, I’m black and blue you know!”

“You and Lanokas both. I’m just glad you’re alive! I didn’t want to scare you before, but I can’t heal paralysis. I’m not sure it’s a healable….” A sharp pop sounded. “Was that your back?!”

“I’m fine. Just stiffer than a cornstalk.”

After a couple of minutes and a lot of groaning, Kansten was standing with one arm around Kora’s neck and stretching gingerly, her grip weak but her voice steady. “So, when are you going to heal yourself?”

“What?” said Kora. Then, “Ow!” The sting of her sliced cheek finally registered, peaking when she spoke. She grabbed at the injury; Lanokas took over as Kansten’s support. Kora forced out an incantation, and a wide, lax grin took the place of the open wound upon her face. A second spell and the blood vanished from her skin and clothing. For the first time, she studied at her ease the chain of red gold that overran the confines of her fist.