The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) (28 page)

The journey was over. Kansten was weak, Lanokas hobbling, the brush burn on Kora’s leg stung, but no one’s injuries were permanent. A bit of pain did nothing to ruin the moment’s perfection, the sweetness of a victory never expected and all too rare. What if—Kora cast away her cynicism, if only for a moment—what if the chain now in her possession truly were the key to defeating a certain second sorcerer?

“Kora?” said Kansten. Kora pulled herself from her daydream. “We need to do something about….” And she pointed to the spot where Petroc stood motionless, framed against the wall.

“Don’t be too rough with him,” said Lanokas. “Neslan and Bennie would be dead if his threats hadn’t dragged us to Podrar.”

It was true, Kora realized. They would be dead along with Sedder. No three Leaguesmen could have fought off Zalski and that number of guards. Bendelof owed her life to Petroc’s eccentricities, Neslan with her, provided no one had caught them fleeing to Yangerton. Would they be waiting when Kora returned? Would anyone be left to greet her?

Now was not the time for doleful wonderings. Kora magicked her sack over, grabbed a clean bandana, and moved Petroc to the base of the nearest column. She cast his own binding spell—she remembered the incantation,
Lassmagico
— and a string of purple wound itself around the sorcerer and the architecture.

“Let me do the honors,” said Kansten. She supported her own weight as she gagged the immobile, open-mouthed Petroc. Kora leaned close to the sorcerer to revive him. He stirred almost instantly.

“Listen,” Kora said, “you have no idea what you forced me to risk. I was arrested north of Podrar. I was attacked by Zalski himself, but I came here. I fought. I fought and I won.” Kora held out the chain. “Now I make the demands. No more magic.”

Petroc nodded stiffly.

“I know some nasty spells. They’re on the tip of my tongue,” said Kora. She vanished Petroc’s bonds, and he tore the gag from his mouth.

“You said your lapdogs had no magic.”

“You asked if they were sorcerers, which they aren’t. And that lapdog”—Kora indicated Lanokas—“happens to be next in line for the legitimate throne. Show some respect.”

Petroc studied the prince with a scathing eye. Then he addressed Kora. “An interesting bit of knowledge,” he said. “I care more about where you learned to enchant that amulet.”

“The spell was in a book. The Crimson League has a small collection.”

Kora had no idea how common an enchantment like the one on Kansten’s amulet actually was. Since the spell came from the
Librette
she explained the charm away how she could think to, and Petroc seemed to accept her explanation. Lanokas, with a natural disdain, changed the subject before things turned dangerous.

“We’re the ones asking questions. We came all this way for a chain. I expect it does more than hang around her neck?”

“It will forge a link between Miss Porteg and the individual of her choosing.”

Kora stared at the glinting red gold in her palm. “What do you mean, a link?”

“A mental connection. You can read the thoughts, watch the surroundings of any one person, without said person’s knowledge or consent.”

“That’s useful,” said Kansten. She was clinging again to Lanokas to stand.

Useful it might be, but a chill ran down Kora’s spine. “It sounds parasitic.”

“Then I suggest you choose your host wisely,” Petroc told her. “Only death can break the link and allow you to forge a second.”

A succession of faces flashed before Kora’s eyes. Zalski was the obvious choice, but was he the best? What about Malzin, the head of his guard? What about Laskenay, or Menikas? There would be no more secrets, no gnawing doubt that they kept her even now from important information. And then—Kora’s heart melted to think of it—what about her mother, or Zacry? This was her chance, the only chance she could expect, to be near them again.

Lanokas sensed Kora’s uncertainty. “This magic is meant for you, for you alone.
I won’t tell you how to use it. N
o one will. Give it time, though. Be sure your choice is the one you really want.”

Kora raised her eyes to Petroc. “How do I use the thing?”

“Put the chain around your neck and say a name,” he told her, and she did a double take.

“It’s that simple?”

“If the parchment sealed with the chain was accurate, yes.”

Kora’s stomach tied in knots. “Who wrote the parchment? Who locked the necklace away and enchanted it like this?”

Petroc raised an eyebrow. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. Kansten stepped forward, supporting her own weight for only the second time since Kora healed her.

“My turn. You said Zalski killed your brother. Why don’t you fight the guilty bastard instead of attacking those of us breaking our backs, imagine this, trying to thwart him?”

She stood firm beneath Petroc’s glare. His voice was colder than Kora had ever heard it. “My brother was an idealistic simpleton who in many ways brought about his own destruction.”

“He was a lot like us,” Lanokas interpreted.

“Perhaps I’m Zalski’s match. And I was fond of my brother. But I see no reason to risk my neck to avenge him. If you plan to keep pestering Zalski, I wish you luck. You’ll need it.”

Kora waved Kansten back, spoke before the blonde could. “We’d need less if you threw your hand in, even working solo. The fight isn’t about vengeance. Well, for some it is, but it doesn’t have to be. Don’t make it about your brother, make it about you. Don’t you want to leave these mountains? You’ve sealed yourself off. You can’t realize how much worse things have gotten.”

“I’ve done my part in giving you your chain. Now go.”

“Giving it to me? You didn’t give me anything!”

“
GO
!”

Kora grabbed her friends’ hands. A moment later, they found themselves in a secluded wood, with the gurgle of rushing water just perceptible through the trees. The sun to the west was approaching the horizon.

“Where are we?” asked Lanokas. He stepped forward to examine his surroundings. With a visible strain to stay upright, Kansten let go of Kora’s fingers and of the chain of red gold they both grasped.

“We’re at the spot where we crossed the river,” Kora said. She smiled at Lanokas as she realized what that signified: they were going back. Even Kansten’s face lost the most alarming traces of her pallor.

“What’ll you do with the necklace?” Kansten asked.

Kora stared at the chain. A swirling swarm of faces seemed to stare right back in the last bit of daylight the metal reflected. “I don’t know. I really don’t. It would be a mistake to choose anyone flat-out.”

“Don’t rush a decision,” Lanokas advised. “Let it come to you.”

A rustle in the woodlands made Kora jump. She summoned her shell, but let it fall away as Bidd and Hayden swung down from a tree they had perched in.

“You’re back?” said Hayden. He brushed some loose dirt from his pants.

“Excellent!” cried Bidd.

“Shhh!” cried Kansten.

Someone was picking through the foliage, moving closer, heedless of noise. The five outlaws huddled together; Bidd and Hayden readied their bows, and Kora, remembering what had happened the last time they shot an arrow, felt her throat grow tight.

A teenager dressed in black burst in the clearing. His head of untamed curls was as dark as his shabby clothes, and his eyes were a bright shade of gray. It took a second for Kora, who knew she had seen him before, to remember where. The boy threw his arms up.

“Don’t shoot! Bidd, don’t….”

“
Hal
?” Bidd dropped his bow and rushed to Prue’s grandson, the boy from the portrait in the locket. They embraced like brothers. “What in God’s name…?”

“I’m on the lam,” Hal announced. “Taxes.”

“You wouldn’t know it from the noise you made.”

“You try forcing your way quietly through those weeds.”

“We’re on the lam too, me and Hayden. We killed a soldier.”

“
What
?”

“Well, we almost did. He’s not the one we’d hang for if they caught us, though.”

Hayden shook Hal’s hand, and asked, “How did you come this far north?”

“I go up and down the road by night, from village to village. Camp out for a week at a time. Fontferry’s the best, I stay in an abandoned farmhouse.”

“You rode past us on your way here,” said Kora.

“Did I really? Who are you?”

“You can trust him,” said Bidd, when Kora gave no answer. “He’s one of my oldest friends. In fact, he’ll want to join us.”

Hal turned to Kora. “I’ll go anywhere if you can promise me food. All I found today was a blackberry bush. And company would be nice, I can tell you.”

“You won’t be lonely where we’re going,” Lanokas assured him. “You will
be wanted dead. Consider it a trade-off.”

“I’m already wanted dead. And anything’s better than starving.” The boy looked desperate. “You’re the Crimson League, aren’t you? Please…”

Lanokas told him, “We owe a great debt to your grandmother. All she asked in payment was that we help you, should we meet. I don’t suppose you’d want a safehouse, but we can find you one. It’s what the old woman would want. Listen, you’d have food enough there, and companions.”

Hal waved his arms in protest. “I’d rather keep on alone. Trapped in one place, not me.”

“It’s your prerogative,” said Lanokas.

“I want to join you.”

“Then you’ll explain why you lied. We know why you’re wanted, it’s not tax evasion.”

“It all comes down to that, doesn’t it? That’s why they arrested my uncle.” Hal told how the jail in his town was small and ill-guarded; how he had removed the bars on his uncle’s cell window, cutting five years off a six-year term; how the two had gone separate ways, to be harder to identify, since the guards would be searching for the pair of them. “I hope they didn’t nab him. I’ve been lucky myself, so far. Look, I don’t know you, that’s why I didn’t tell Bidd the whole story. If I’d realized you were the Crimson League, I wouldn’t have kept a thing back, not a thing. But then, I guess the League can’t let just anyone in on its secrets. I’m telling you, I have nothing to lose. I meant what I said, I want to join you.”

Kora said, “You have your life, don’t act like that’s meaningless. You know what you’re risking?”

“Everyone knows what I’d be risking.”

Kansten rubbed her back, her mood sour. “Three of them,” she said. “Three, and Menikas won’t be expecting newbies. He won’t expect one.” Kora said that somehow, she didn’t think he’d mind.

Hal responded, “That’s the problem with your work. You’d have people lining up if not for that pesky death rate.”

Kansten glared at him. Lanokas admonished, “Not funny.”

“No,” Hal agreed, “it isn’t.”

“It’s getting dark,” cut in Hayden. “I say we spend the night in that farmhouse Hal mentioned.”

Hal approved the idea, judging by his enthusiasm. “The place isn’t far. It should probably be condemned, to tell the truth, but at least no one comes by. There’s a sign out front says ‘Wheatfield.’”

Kora gripped the chain in her hand so tightly it cut her palm. “What’s the place called?”

“Wheatfield,” Hal repeated. “Why?”

“My mother grew up in that house. She owns it.”

Kora’s family’s wealth had always been tied to Wheatfield. By the time Ilana married and tried to sell her estate, no one offered to buy. The house was in ruins, and Fontferry had not been a popular immigration zone; at least, not among people with the means to buy a farm. Now, under Zalski, the north had grown attractive, but Zalski set market prices as well as tax rates, and he did so with the idea of keeping people centered in Yangerton and Podrar, where he had greatest control.

“Is this Wheatfield place safe?” Kansten asked.

Lanokas said, “From interference it is, and that’s all we can hope for. As Kora’s family owns it, it’s so obvious a haven no elites would imagine we’d take shelter there. And if Zalski sent someone after us, they’re from his elite guard.”

445

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Family Secrets

Ilana Porteg had described Wheatfield countless times for her children. Remembering her stories, Kora always imagined the place as it must have been in the old days, and did not want to taint her childhood illusions with images of the farm in disrepair. She had no choice, that was what she told herself, and she and the others followed Hal through the forest to a weed-strewn field and eventually the skeleton of Ilana’s former home.

The farmhouse was larger than Kora expected, a two-story wooden structure whose left front corner looked ready to collapse. “I don’t go near that side,” Hal explained. “The rest is in better condition.”

They climbed through a back window and landed in the master bedroom. The bed and wardrobes were rotted, and the frame of a full-length mirror corroded with rust, but there was little dust, and thankfully no visible vermin. Hal had made the room habitable, but something about the place spooked Kora. It reminded her of the Landfill’s first floor, which brought to mind Zalski’s eavesdropping session and attack, and she wondered, who else was in this building? Oh, not Zalski, surely, but maybe some outlaw like Hal, someone longing to improve his standing in the community who would jump at the chance to lead soldiers to the Crimson League. For one black instant Kora saw herself dead and decaying here, along with Wheatfield itself.

“I want to search the house,” she announced.

Hayden blinked in surprise. Lanokas said, “The structure’s not sturdy.”

“It’s sturdy enough. Someone else could be here, across the hall, or upstairs. I’m searching this house.”

“Are you sure you just don’t want to make the rounds because your mother…?”

“I’m not being sentimental! Who’d be sentimental about a home in this condition? I don’t want uninvited guests while we’re here, that’s the whole of it.”

“Well, you shouldn’t search alone,” said Lanokas.

“Then come along,” Kora told him.

“You’re not leaving me!” said Kansten.

“You feel up for this?” asked Kora.

Kansten answered, “What does that matter?” and she, Kora, and Lanokas walked out into a hall that reeked of decay. The air was stale and musty; piles of dust proved what little ventilation there had been in twenty years ineffective. They walked toward a sitting room with slightly better lighting, since the moon just managed to penetrate three grimy windows. By torchlight they found a couch of faded cloth, some chairs presumably made of wood, and—Kora walked up and touched it, her finger leaving a print in the dust—her grandmother’s coffee table, the one passed down for generations in her family and which Ilana would surely have moved to Hogarane if she ever had the money.

Kora stared at the piece of furniture. She could understand why her mother talked about it so much. The fact that it was an heirloom would have been sufficient cause, but the table was truly a work of craftsmanship, with carvings and grooves down its sides and thick legs. It looked majestic even covered in two decades’ worth of filth.

“We might as well start with the second floor,” said Kansten.

The staircase was old and shaky, and Kora half-feared it would collapse, but it merely groaned beneath them. Kansten went first, refusing Kora’s support though she still was unsteady on her feet. She made it on her own, but slowly, and leaned hard on the banister when she reached the top. The rail broke at the base and tumbled to the sitting room, taking the woman with it.

“
Mudar
!” Kora screamed, and caught Kansten before she slammed into the floor. She lowered her carefully; Kansten choked in the dust that flew up when the banister smashed the coffee table. Kora ran to her, Lanokas behind, moving slower because of his leg and the torch he held. The steps groaned more ominously than ever but held firm, and they both reached Kansten as Bidd, Hayden, and Hal came coughing down the hall.

“I’m fine,” said the blonde. “Fine! This afternoon exhausted me, that’s all. Don’t crowd me!”

While the boys swarmed over Kansten, who kept swearing under her breath, Kora mourned the pile of shards beneath the banister. Her family’s one heirloom, guarded for generations….

In the middle of the pile, half-enclosed in the bulk of what had been one of the table’s legs, glinted a strip of yellowish-white. An envelope? Unnoticed by the others, who were trying to get Lanokas to explain what precisely they had done that afternoon, Kora slipped to the wreckage and retrieved what was, in fact, four pieces of parchment stuffed together. She opened to the first. It was covered with faded, cursive script, and nearly crumbled in her hands.

The chances are great the next person to read these words will be my distant descendent, should anyone ever read them: I will seal my confession in an old table that my daughter, at her mother’s instigation, believes an heirloom. I have no doubt my Talia, ever sentimental, will keep the table passed within our line for generations. If nothing else, I pray she might attempt to.

I made great changes these last years. Some were unavoidable, and as such, sit not ill upon my conscience. Others I begin to regret. I regret the only spell I wrote was one to erase the sorcerer’s mark from myself and from the child I was soon to bear. I regret that when Talia was born I told her naught of her great power, of her heritage. For it is clear to me she has power, and that her own children, and their children, will live in ignorance of what they are. I have merely erased the mark, not the capacity to cast spells, and yet, wretch that I am—after Hansrelto, after the outcries against magic of any form—I cannot bring myself to stigmatize my daughter by inducting her in the ways of magic. Neither can I bear my identity, my personal history, to be forever lost. I changed my home, my name, only to find that such trivialities mean nothing and have altered nothing of the person that I am. I can only think to entrust myself to this paper, to the future, consoling myself with the knowledge that the truth of my life may not be forgotten. Until I die I shall be known as Velma, but the name of Mayven is carved upon my soul.

Whoever you may be to find this, you dear, dear child of mine—forgive me for depriving you of the knowledge of your gift. Yes, magic is a gift, not a curse, despite what the jealousies and phobias of the world would have you believe. I am not as strong as many used to think me. I have let them browbeat me, I squander a talent that in fact could accomplish much good for many people. Do not follow my path.

To seal away this letter will be my final act of sorcery. I intend to work no other, have dared no other in thirty years.…

Kora’s hands were shaking. She nearly dropped the parchment, but Bidd, Hal, and Hayden were so intent on convincing Lanokas to explain the day’s project and his and Kansten’s injuries—which he blatantly refused to do—that she doubted they would notice if she had.

When Kora first discovered her powers, she had consoled herself with the belief they came from the ruby, like her shield clearly did, and that when all of this was over, assuming she survived, they would disappear. They would disappear so life could return to normal. She saw now that magic had always been a part of her, waiting to be discovered; she simply had never known that she came from Mayven’s line, that the hero of the old revolt was her ancestor. It sounded as though the woman had been with child during the revolt itself. As her descendents, not only Kora but Zacry and Ilana must have power such as Mayven’s daughter never suspected she possessed, power that would not vanish with Zalski’s fall.

To find this out three weeks ago would have destroyed me. Now, though…. What she says about the gift makes sense. Didn’t I save Hank Spiller’s life when Bidd and Hayden shot him? Using magic?

If I have to stay a sorceress, I guess that’s all right. It’s definitely…. It’s not the worst thing that could happen. And if it’s not so awful in my case, it’s no different in Mother’s or Zacry’s.

It was with some measure of calm that Kora slipped Mayven’s letter inside her boot. The teenagers, meanwhile, had given up on Lanokas. Bidd was telling Hal that Kora was the Marked One, and Kora answered his inquisitive look with a slight nod. They returned to the room they planned to stay in, and Kansten shook her head, her sour mood in full force.

“Do you remember this room looking so small?” she asked.

“We’ll be a tight fit,” Lanokas admitted. “But we’ll make do. Maybe Kora could vanish the furniture.”

“There’d still be decades of gunk beneath it,” argued Kansten. “I’m not sleeping on that.”

With an air of doubt, Hal suggested they spend the night in the barn, which was in better condition than the farmhouse and much larger than the master bedroom. “I haven’t cleaned the place,” he said. “But we have a sorceress, don’t we? If our choice is the gunk here versus there….”

“I can’t work miracles,” said Kora. “But I can make the barn livable for a few hours, I imagine.” Once again, she thanked the Giver that Laskenay had made her study housekeeping spells.

They went to the barn loft for a dinner of cured meat provided by Bidd and Hayden. The horses they stabled below, once Kora transported them from the woods. Kora dozed off after that; she was so sleep-deprived that not even discovering a blood relation to Mayven could keep her up. She woke, however, before dawn just refreshed enough that alternating thoughts of her ancestor’s letter and Petroc’s chain kept her mind active. Her blanket wrapped around her for warmth, she grabbed her sack and slipped out into the cool, clear night, where the first frost of the year had hit.

The sky was truly gorgeous up north. The moon sat lower and larger in the sky than Kora was used to, and she was sure she imagined it, but the stars seemed brighter, to twinkle more often. She had just started rooting through her things when the barn door creaked open behind her.

“I heard you get up,” said Lanokas. “I wasn’t sleeping well either.” He indicated his bruised leg. “What are you mulling over?”

“The chain,” said Kora, pulling it from her sack. She did not want to show him Mayven’s letter, which she had earlier stored between the pages of a spellbook. She suspected she would never show that to anyone, except her family.

“Do you know how you want to use it? Who’s the lucky victim?”

“Alten Grombach.”

Zalski’s co-conspirator, the General who had not been seen for months and was surely up to something important…. Alten had been in the back of Kora’s mind all day, and she had fought to keep him there, because she knew he was the only choice and the thought of connecting with her family was the greatest comfort she had known since Sedder’s death. Lanokas studied her silently. “You’re surprised,” she said.

“I thought you would choose Zalski. It’s the obvious thing to do.”

“Zalski
was
obvious. Too obvious, that’s what I told myself. The truth is, I’m too much of a coward to pick Zalski. I don’t want to know what’s inside his head. I don’t want to know if he’s grimly satisfied by what he did to Sedder, if he chuckles when he thinks of it, if he doesn’t care at all….”

“He knows magic, Kora. You could learn from him. If not specific spells, the way to focus your magic, to grow in your own power.”

“He offered once to teach me. I turned him down then, and I’d do it a third time. You think it’s a mistake, choosing Alten?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. Since I’ve known you your instincts haven’t led you wrong. If you feel it should be Alten Grombach, let it be Alten Grombach.”

“I’m doing it now,” she said. Before she could change her mind, she put the chain around her neck and muttered Alten’s name.

She felt weak, much as she had when Petroc brought her those two times to the Hall of Sorcery against her will. This magic, though, was different: at Wheatfield she fell to her knees, somehow remaining conscious of what happened where her body rested in a kind of trance. She could see Lanokas, without alarm, standing guard just as surely as she saw the lantern-lit, bony face of a middle-aged man staring at a mineral deposit in a cavern wall, hacking at the ore with a pickaxe. He was tall, almost gaunt, and more imposing to look at than one would have expected, given his thin frame. The oil lamp lent his pale complexion a ghoul-like glimmer. His eyes were drooping, he looked to have spent all day and half the night in the caves, and gave no sign he knew he had company, but went on with his work, his large, strong hands swinging at the wall. After two blows he stopped to wipe his forehead with a sleeve, contentment etched in his face.

Almost done
.

The words echoed in Kora’s brain, though the general’s lips never moved. He continued his work with renewed vigor. His voice was deep and drawling.

I should have come here at the start instead of sifting through the damn riverbed. And the mines down south, a waste of four months. Four damn months! But that’s all done with. I found it. This chunk of mindstone should be more than Zalski needs, then I can get back and fix the damage Malzin’s wreaked upon my men.

All trace of exhaustion left him. His face took on a sneer at the thought of Zalski’s wife.

Completely inept. It’s painful enough she robs m
e of my most skilled lieutenants. W
hy Zalski couldn’t put someone with credentials in charge of my army when I left…. That bitch can’t accomplish a thing without help, even with the men at her disposal, men whose talent
I
incubate. There’s no way she’s found the
Librette.
None.