The King's Sons (The Herezoth Trilogy) (38 page)

Where
the hell was Linstrom?

Kora
got her answer when an invisible hand grabbed her from behind, covering her
mouth. She bit at a finger she couldn’t see, felt her teeth meet flesh, but got
no audible reaction and no reflexive flinch on Linstrom’s part to release her.
She struggled with him, but he was stronger, and she had the disadvantage of
being blind. She swung and kicked out to meet air; with a swipe of his foot
Linstrom clipped her ankles and sent her tumbling to the straw they stood on,
falling with her, his palm securely to her jaw.

Would
he kill her? Take her captive, transport her to the Hall? Could he even
transport from within the stables? Kora didn’t know, she realized. She hadn’t
asked Vane that. She suspected transporting was possible, but….

She
tried again to pry her mouth free, and could not. From the corner of her eye she
saw the king stagger to the door of his stall. His left arm was useless, limp
and bloody beneath the arrow shaft that protruded above it, but a sweeping motion
with his right was all he needed to come to Kora’s aid. Linstrom uttered the
first syllables of a binding spell Kora knew—captivity must have been his
intent—but before he finished the incantation, Rexson’s telekinesis
helped Kora jerk the invisible hand from her lips. Before the sorcerer could
clasp it back she cast
Mudar
, one of
the shortest spells she knew, and sent him sliding across wooden shards into
the doorless stall where his axeman had broken free.

Linstrom
careened into the wall as Rexson’s effort made him collapse against his own
short door, hitting the arrow shaft as he did so, pushing it farther into his
shoulder, his chest. Kora cast
Desfazair,
and Linstrom’s dusty, straw-coated form appeared before her for the first
time in person; his head was bleeding where it had slammed against the
stables—pure luck, that—and he cast what Vane had warned was a
befuddlement spell. Thanks to Jane Trand’s protective magic, it had no effect
on Kora. She feigned the appropriate reaction for that incantation.

Amig Enmigo
would confuse friend
and foe, would bring her to attack the king while Linstrom gained time to
recover from the beating he’d taken at Kora’s hand. It was a smart move, a
brilliant move, considering the information at his disposal.

Eyes
glaring, Kora rushed to the king’s stall, or began to. After two steps she
whirled back to face Linstrom. He struggled to rise to his feet, and she spoke
the same incantation she had used against his flying swordsman: a severing
spell, to cut hanging threads from the seam of a dress, or the green top off
carrots. In this case, it severed Linstrom’s spine at the base of his neck.

The
death was kinder than Linstrom deserved, but would prove as permanent as any
other, and faster than alternative methods. Had Linstrom suspected who that
thin-haired, telekinetic foe had been? Who it was he had tried to befuddle Kora
into killing? She’d never know, and she had no time to ponder such things. Once
again, the sorceress set off toward the king, an entirely different expression
on her face this time. She had seen him fall forward, seen him worsen his
injury.

Before
Kora reached him, Linstrom’s archer-seer interfered. She burst through the
gaping front doors and shot an arrow that Kora had to throw herself to the
straw-littered ground to dodge. She could barely hear Gertrude’s hysterical
shrieks over the din elsewhere.

“I
know who you’re going to.” Kora tried to catch her breath. She redirected a
second arrow before it struck her below the throat. “I know who’s in that stall,
and you won’t reach him.”

Gertrude’s
dainty nose pointed upward with determination. As she aimed a third arrow, Kora
snapped her bow with a spell, but the seer gave no reaction beyond tossing her
useless weapon aside. She had known what would happen. She was sacrificing
herself to hold up Kora, to keep her from the king. She was hoping, perhaps,
that one of her conspirators could worsen the delay.

As
the seer drew a dagger and ran at Kora in desperation, Kora used
Mudar
to thrust the woman’s weaponhand
inward. Gertrude stumbled as she stabbed herself in the chest; she hit the
ground, and Kora broke her neck the same as Linstrom’s.

All
around, the battle raged. Kora paid it no mind. She dragged herself up and ran
to the man who had helped pry Linstrom off her.

He
was unconscious, as she feared. She vanished the door that blocked her off and
fell to her knees at his side. Bubbles of blood sat on his lips. The arrow
shaft, much less of it was visible now outside him than before. At that angle,
the arrowhead could have hit a lung, or his heart. Severed an artery. He’d been
struck on the left side and lost more blood than Kora would have thought
possible.

“Rexson!
Rexson, no….”

Her
old comrade-in-arms was not unconscious after all. He was dead. Herezoth’s king
was dead.

* * *

“
KORA!
”

Vane’s
scream wiped Kora’s mind blank. She dove past Rexson’s body to the edge of the
stall, cutting her side on shards of the broken window as she crossed her arms
like an X and rolled to her back; her crimson shell materialized. The red-eyed
axeman had thrown his weapon so that it lodged in the floor next to the king,
exactly where Kora had been kneeling before Vane’s cry.

Linstrom’s
associate charged in and pulled up his axe with no effort at all, as though it
possessed no more bulk or weight than a dinner fork. Half of a floorboard came
up with it. His strength spells had deepened his voice to an unnatural pitch.

“Kora,”
he said, with a twisted grin. The muscles on his arms would have torn any one
of Parker’s work shirts. His long, brown hair with streaks of gray had come
unbound, and sweat drenched his cotton shirt, ran in torrents down his face. He
evoked a shield behind him as red as the blood that spotted Rexson’s mouth, and
the magic energy made Vane’s killing spell harmless. “Kora Porteg. What do you
know?”

Linstrom’s
sorcerer held his shield steady. Next to Vane, Thad Greller made to rush at
him, but the duke held him back, sending a binding spell at the same time. His
magic accomplished nothing.

Kora’s
arms, unsupported in the air above her, began to shake, and her shell
flickered. She ached so badly…. All she had done since the battle began was
tumble. The axe came flying at her a second time, and she vanished it before it
careened into her defense, or right through it at a moment her shell was down.

To
lose a favored weapon did not please Linstrom’s warrior. His shield never
wavering—he was one of the most powerful sorcerers Kora had ever
seen—he cast a second spell simultaneously. Bolts of searing white energy
fizzled as they hit her shell, the unique defense her ruby gave her. The
onslaught lasted a good thirty seconds, and Kora’s arms were burning, screaming
protest as she struggled to hold them in position. One, cut by the glass, had
streaks of blood running toward her elbow.

Vane
broke the foe’s shield with an explosion spell just as Kora lost all strength
in her arms and her barrier against Linstrom’s sorcerer collapsed. Luckily for
her, that bolt spell had run its course, and while Linstrom’s man took the time
to bring his shield up again behind him, judging Kora too weak to cast, the
sorceress threw all her mental energy behind
Desfazair.
She hoped to return his eyes to normal and strip his
unnatural strength.

Her
magic succeeded. His enhanced bulk disappeared. Nonplussed, he let his shield
drop again, and Vane hit him with a quick muting spell to further weaken him,
preventing him access to his magic. Without an axe, without his incantations,
he tried to fight back but was no match for Thad’s training. The nobleman
sliced the arm his foe shot out to grab a sword hilt, then lopped off his head
with one strong swing.

Outside
the stall, the battle for the stables was ongoing. Linstrom’s last sorcerer,
the red-eyed swordsman, was holding his own against Rexson’s soldiers, or
whichever of them still lived. From their cries, their groans, they needed
assistance. Magical assistance. Vane stood frozen, having noticed the king
where he lay on the straw in front of Kora, who still felt too weak to stand.
The duke’s jaw went slack. He shook his head in denial, lurched to check for a
pulse. Kora crept toward Vane and stretched out a hand to stop him.

“He’s
dead,” she whispered. “We can’t help him. Get that swordsman, go!”

Thad
pulled Vane back, holding his dripping sword in one hand. The men rushed to the
central aisle, left Kora’s view. Kora trembled to look at the headless body
mere feet from her, still gushing blood on the wall. The archer who’d shot
Rexson lay near as well. Beside that corpse, out of the spray, the king’s
lifeless eyes made Kora’s heart wrench. She crawled to him, eased his lids shut
with shaking fingers while she told herself he would never blame her for his
death. That wound should never have taken his life. Never would have, if only
he’d listened to her and kept still, kept away from the battle. Healing him
would have taken at least three minutes, time neither she nor Vane could spare
at the battle’s start. If he’d listened….

I’d be dead if he’d
listened, dead or worse. He gave me a chance to kill Linstrom.

Well,
Linstrom had one man standing, and a formidable one at that. Kora fought back
the tears in her eyes, the sobs that threatened to rack her chest and make
speech unintelligible. She needed her words, needed spells, for Vane might
require her help: Vane, as much a son to Rexson as to Kora, though neither
could claim a blood relation with the duke.

She
stumbled to her feet and entered the stable proper just in time to see
Linstrom’s swordsman yell with red-eyed rage. He could not shield himself both
from Vane’s magic and the blades Thad and four soldiers swung at him. What
magic the warrior cast he used to heal the worst of his injuries, for his arms,
his chest, his thighs, they were peppered with wounds of varying depth and
damage. Vane kept his distance because he held no sword, shouting incantation
after incantation: making the man stumble, flinging his long hair before his
face, and vanishing his sword. That last was enough; five blades impaled Linstrom’s
sorcerer all at once. With a gurgling sound and a throaty shout he fell
forward, not to rise again.

A
sweat-covered, blood-soaked Vane then turned to Kora. None of the blood was
his; his stumblings toward her were those of a grieving man, not an injured
one. His eyes, always large, swallowed every inch of his face. Thad left his
uniformed fellows to retrieve and clean their weapons, deserting his own, and
rushed to offer his friend a shoulder to lean on. Vane took it.

“Rexson.”
That was all the duke could say. Kora wrapped her arms around him, heedless of
the gore that clung to them both, cursing the spell that made her look a
stranger to him in the midst of such loss. “Rexson.”

Kora
said, “He died saving me.” Vane should know that. He should know his surrogate
father had not died in weakness, or as a coward. “He saved me from Linstrom.
You were tied up, with that axeman. I couldn’t….”

Tears
carved a path through the bits of straw, the dust, all the grime on the face
that wasn’t Kora’s but nonetheless belonged to her. Thad said, “He can’t be
gone. I won’t believe it. The king can’t be….”

Vane
eased Kora away, placed a hand on Thad’s shoulder. “He’s dead. One of many.”

Kora
said, “There’ll be more dead inside, if we don’t hurry there.”

One
of the surviving soldiers, behind them, had Thad’s sword wiped and ready. The
nobleman took his weapon, and Vane led a trot that quickly became a sprint to
the manor.

* * *

Gertrude,
Linstrom’s “seer,” left her comrades-in-arms at the manor in a sore position
when their leader claimed her for the stables. She could give no warning that
armed guards waited, and General Bruan’s troops cut down a number of men as
they sneaked into both the door from the garden path and the side servants’
entrance.

Hayden
Grissner and soldier archers, cloaked against the foe’s detection magic,
perched in the closest trees to pick off the tail end of Linstrom’s army
gathered at that servants’ door. From inside, on the uppermost landing of a
spiral, wooden staircase, Hune and additional bowmen shot stragglers who
clustered near the threshold. When a pair of sorcerers started shooting stray
spells, Walten protected his allies with a shield the color of chestnut wood; his
younger brother tripped the enemy casters, and Hune polished them off from
afar, hitting both in the neck.

By
then a number of Linstrom’s followers had gained the staircase, so Hune urged
his dogs to meet the first line of attackers, though to do so broke his heart.
Walt and Wilhem, like Hune and his archers, adjusted their aim to the advancing
foe, firing not arrows but severing spells to break necks: so their uncle had
instructed. Gratton and other uniformed men waited with swords at the ready to
protect the prince and the sorcerers. Their blades already had killed three enemy
casters who transported to the landing; they had thrown the bodies down, so
they wouldn’t hinder movement.