The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) (21 page)

The room remained still. No one even sighed in fifteen minutes. Kora had never wished so badly to be anywhere else, anywhere; had she known the time she would have counted every second. Instead, she suggested they go back through the plan for tomorrow.

Neslan nodded in her direction. “It couldn’t hurt,” he said, and the group launched into a recital of how things should go the next day, for no other reason than to distract themselves.

* * *

The noon sun was hot on Kora’s invisible head, hotter than normal for the month of November; hot enough, in fact, to make her remove her bandana temporarily. She had left the city and passed to the range of hills northward, hills that served as a buffer between Podrar and the surrounding forest.

Three people stood in her line of vision, two of them associates of Lanokas. He had called on them that morning. A married couple in their early forties, they had no trouble acting the part of lovers out for an afternoon stroll and paid no undue attention to the young workingman exercising his horse at a canter. Zalski’s guard played his role perfectly: had Neslan not named this spot a certain place to find at least one soldier, Kora would never have suspected the pleasant-looking horseman. Lanokas and Kansten hid nearby, just inside the city limits.

Kora waited for the guard to move closer. When he did, she whispered “
Kaiga
,” and the horse stumbled over its front feet, nearly tossing the man on its back. “
Estatua
,” she added, and the rider fell with a hollow-sounding thud to the grass, frozen on his side in a sitting position.

Lanokas and Kansten led their horses out from hiding. Kora, with a quick glance for strangers, replaced her headwrap and turned visible. She stared at the statuesque guard, his skin a now familiar shade of gray almost metallic. “You’re sure he’s not watching us?” she asked.

Kansten said, “I couldn’t see or hear a thing when you cast that spell on me.” Lanokas tossed her his reins and steadied the soldier’s horse, which he offered to Kora.

“Your steed, my lady?”

“I couldn’t control that animal.”

“Take mine then.” He helped Kora onto his gelding, whose saddlebags were filled with supplies. Kansten climbed on her chestnut mare. Lanokas then pulled himself on the back of the third horse, a stallion, the darkest of the three, while the married couple arranged themselves around the fallen plain-clothes guard.

“Thanks again,” said Lanokas. “Especially for fetching the horses.” The woman asked him:

“You still can’t say why you’re heading north?”

Lanokas said they’d all be safer if he didn’t, and she accepted his answer with good will. “It was an honor to meet you,” she told Kora. Her husband said the same, pressing the group of three to head off.

Lanokas and Kansten urged their horses forward; a few steps and they disappeared in the forest. Kora followed more slowly, turning in her saddle to mutter “
Desfazair
” from the shelter of the trees, as far from the immobile guard as she could put herself. He began to stir, and she took off after Lanokas, leaving the League’s supporters to fuss over the handsome young man stunned when he fell from his mount, which they regretted to tell him had bolted.

It took Kora, Kansten and Lanokas four hours to reach a small milling village, the first settlement on their path. They stopped outside it to let the horses graze and to eat the most perishable of their food stores. The boiled eggs Prue gave them were not what Kora wanted midway through the afternoon, but they constituted a meal, and she found she was hungry enough that they tasted as fine as the herb-smothered chicken her mother used to make.

After lunch they set off again, skirting the town; it was far too close to Podrar and too intimate a place for the deposed prince, the Marked One, and the woman who had just attacked Zalski’s wife to show themselves. Kora looked out at what she could see of the town through the trees. The mill met her eyes first, its wooden wheel turning on the river, four or five men bustling all around it with crates and boxes and donkey-led wagons. A span of quaint stores and homes also fell in view, and left no doubt a stranger would be greeted in this quiet, simple spot with wary eyes. Lanokas had hoped the pilgrims might eat here, might stop a bit, so he and his companions could slip among them to obtain the ideal cover. Zalski knew no Leaguesmen had left Podrar with that group, which was why the prince wanted to join it, but unfortunately, the pilgrims had ridden past. The mill would have shut down for forty or more visitors. The village was just that small.

“Now what do we do?” asked Kora.

Lanokas said, “We keep moving.”

“When can we take to the road?”

“Tomorrow. Zalski’s never been known to set guards on the roads themselves, he goes for town entrances, but it’s best to be cautious.”

Kansten was less than thrilled by Lanokas’s observation. She slumped in her saddle, harrumphing like the animal that bore her. “How do we get into towns to refill supplies? Or do you plan to eat wild berries and sleep in the woods the whole trip?”

Lanokas rooted through his sack and pulled out three metal pendants strung on twine. They were cheap, molded in the outline of an eye and its iris: the symbol of full health, the symbol a person wore when he traveled to the Pool of Healing in Partsvale. Some returned healed from the journey thanks to the Giver’s mercy, others no. The majority no; the Giver’s miracles were few and far between, but that did nothing to prevent hundreds of people a year making pilgrimage to Partsvale, if not for the Pool, then to visit the god’s shrine close-by. Kora’s mother owned such a charm. She had made the trip in her youth with an aunt who died months later.

Lanokas and Kansten swapped Zalski’s symbol hanging around their necks for the eye. Kora reached out for the last pilgrim’s pendant. “Where did you get these?” she asked the prince.

“Prue pulled me aside last night. She must have heard us mention going north, because she gave me these.”

Suspicious, Kansten fingered the eye that sat upon her chest. “We were careful not to speak when she was around. What if she’s arrested and gives us up? What if Malzin gets to her?”

“We’re ahead of anyone Zalski could send after us. And we’ll avoid towns on the way back. For now, we’ll pass ourselves off as natives of the fishing villages, three cousins. If Kora’s up to it, she can fake the early stages of consumption. That should keep people from getting too close. As far as guards go, you know Zalski concentrates them south of here.”

“Thank God so few people live up north,” said Kora. Kansten glanced at her pendant again.

“I still want to know how Prue overheard us.”

Kora said, “She listened at the door, she must have. Giving the emblems was her way to apologize. She’s a strange person, no? I don’t know what to make of her.” Neither did Lanokas. Kora added, “I wonder if her grandson was arrested, or if he ran for it? I may have read about him, in the
Letter
.”

Kansten said, “If she thinks he ran, she’s deluding herself. Zalski’s men took him. They’re behind ninety percent of disappearances.”

None of the three said to make good time was vital, but they all knew it. Kora thought as much as she could about the obstacles that lay ahead and as little about Sedder, but she never shook him completely from her mind. Only Kansten was markedly out of spirits, if extending her natural tendencies to be difficult could be considered such. She exposed every flaw, every danger in anything Kora or Lanokas suggested. She would hear no criticism of her own ideas, even the most wild, though to be fair, most of them made sense, like taking to the road just before dusk fell to cover a bit more ground. The trio ending up doing just that, and by the time night lay thick they reached the second village past Podrar.

“Do you think the pilgrims stopped here for the night?” Kora asked. “They might ask us to join them.”

“Are you kidding? They were on the open road all day. We were forcing a path through thickets. They’re miles ahead of us.”

Kora knew better than to respond, so ill was Kansten’s mood, but continued to hope for the best until they reached the inn. There were three other guests, all headed to Podrar or Yangerton. These wished Kora the best, but as Lanokas had foreseen, were content to otherwise ignore the ill woman and her friends for fear of contagion. After a dinner of lukewarm soup and tough meat during which no one said a word, Kansten slunk off with an angry look to the room she was to share with Kora. Her travel companions, annoyed with her, played a couple of hands of cards. The game the sorceress suggested, called Cradle, was well-known and required nothing more than a standard deck in four suits: fortune, its symbol a circle; blades, represented by a dagger; knowledge, its icon a book; and sorcery, with its triangle. Lanokas won each round soundly before he and Kora went to ready themselves for bed.

“It’s about time,” Kansten grumbled when Kora joined her. The room was hardly large enough for the two bunked beds that stood in it; Kansten lay in the lower of the two, her face exposed by Kora’s candle. “If you or Lanokas slow us down tomorrow because you stayed up….”

“
Contenay Ruid
.” The walls took on what had become a familiar yellow tinge; the glow actually lit the room a bit. Kansten bolted upright.

“What the…?”

Kora took a seat at the foot of the bottom bed. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Sedder. It wasn’t your fault.”

Kansten smashed her pillow with a fist. “Of course it was! Zalski cast that spell at me! I was stupid enough to turn my back to him. I made myself an easy mark, and someone else paid for it.”

“Listen to me, you didn’t see how it happened. Zalski glared at Sedder with murder in his eyes, and then,
then
he turned to you, so fast I didn’t know how to react. I just didn’t know. Zalski was the only one who knew what he was doing. He knew Sedder would take that hit. You can’t blame yourself, not for the drowning. I’m the sorceress. I’m the one who couldn’t protect him.”

Kansten’s cheeks were so red she looked feverish. Kora felt her eyes fill up with tears, but held them in. She had gone all day without crying. She was not about to start now.

Kansten said, “If you came in here to argue who’s responsible….”

“I came to help you stop feeling guilty for something you didn’t do, before you drive me and Lanokas insane! I understand why you’ve been edgy, I do, but if you don’t get over it, I swear one of us is going to kill you.”

“Go ahead. Go ahead, who the hell cares? My life’s as past due as my taxes.”

Kora took a deep breath. She had toiled so much to turn Kansten friendly, that to make an enemy of her now could be irreparable. She searched for something to say, something inoffensive. “Did you ever think that maybe Zalski planned for you to feel this way? He toys with people’s emotions, Kansten. Manipulates them.”

Kansten contemplated Kora’s suggestion. Her cheeks returned to their normal, peachy hue, and her breathing became less raspy, albeit gradually. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted.

“Listen, when I went to the Crystal Palace, Zalski had three guards escort me to him.” Kansten knitted her brow. “Three guards. I’ll never forget it: one in front and two behind. The corridors were so narrow, I felt suffocated. That’s the kind of thing he does. He’s a master at it. I promise, he planned to kill Sedder before he cast that spell at you. Sedder was the one fighting Malzin, and I think Zalski really does care for her. Doing it the way he did had the bonus of messing with your head, that’s all. Look, if anyone has the right to blame you, wouldn’t it be me?”

“I guess,” said Kansten. She looked at the yellow tinge on the wall and flushed red again. “I’ve been an ass.”

“Forget it. We both need our sleep, we’re getting up at dawn.”

“Right,” said Kansten. “See you in the morning.”

“Ditto.” Kora blew out her candle, climbed to the top bunk, and after removing the sound barrier lay awake for at least an hour, succumbing at last to a stream of silent tears.

Kora and her group had to leave as early as they could the next day; they had no choice, Zalski could have sent someone after them. The prospect of more travel only thickened the drops sliding down Kora’s chin. What she needed was time alone, to recognize Sedder’s loss, to appreciate that his death had been dignified, the kind of death from which his colleagues would take courage. But what difference did that make, in the end? Kora needed no martyr. She needed her friend, in person, his calming presence, his steady voice.

She needed time to accept his absence, time that Zalski too had robbed from her, because Sedder’s life had not been enough. She was rising with the sun to get back to the road, where all her energy would be put to looking ahead, determining the places where an ambush might be set, guessing how many soldiers could be waiting.

He should have just killed me at the Palace, when he had the chance. When he realized I wouldn’t support him. Why didn’t he? Son of a bitch, why didn’t he?

445

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Bidd and Hayden

“Ugh!” Kora turned over beneath her bedsheets. “Leave me alone. Get off….”

“Get up,” came Kansten’s voice. Kora opened her eyes and threw her roommate’s hand off her shoulder.

“Let me sleep,” Kora grumbled. “Let soldiers come get me. I don’t care.”

“You’re really not a morning person, are you?”

Kora croaked back, “How can you be?”

“I grew up on a farm.”

The two women ate an overcooked breakfast with Lanokas. Kansten complained about the food until he told her the innkeeper was an “old friend,” which Kora took to mean the prince had led them to the local safehouse, even if they had not passed the night cramped in the attic. Their luck the night before in scaling the town’s short walls held through the morning, as the Leaguesmen saw no one at all when they climbed back over. They retrieved their horses and passed unimpeded to the road.

The day proved more pleasant than the last, partly because of the lack of brambles, partly because Kora’s body had begun to adjust to the strains of long-distance travel, but mostly because Kansten was in an infinitely better mood. The group passed only a handful of people, all headed south; no one moving north overtook them. They came to the next village close to nightfall, a larger town than any they had seen thus far and which Kansten was sure, and Lanokas agreed, stood a decent chance of being guarded. Kora, reluctantly, suggested they make camp in a birch forest off the road.

As darkness fell, they found a clearing a mile or so into the woods. Dry leaves blanketed the ground, while a number of outlying trees looked decayed and diseased. Lanokas stacked fallen branches as much to make a fire as to clear a space to sleep. Kora held off lighting the wood until a misty night rose around them, giving perfect cover for the smoke; she cast a spell from the book of stealth magic to limit the light the flames gave off, as the heat was what they needed. Kansten took first watch, so Kora and Lanokas pulled out their blankets, Kora with an ache in her stomach she could not explain. She had never been out on a night this eerie.

Lanokas woke Kora some hours before sunrise. As she stretched she looked around, and there was no denying that something about this place frightened her. The fire had died long ago, and the mist was lighter than when Kora first lay down, so that a few scant beams of moonlight broke the grayness. She sat next to the ashes, her blanket across her shoulders, and waited, listening. She heard nothing but the scamper of mice across the leaves. Once she saw, with a start, something squat rise up from the ground, and only realized after raising her shield it was a quail.

When dawn broke she went to wake her companions. Before she quite reached them, a wave of dizziness unlike anything she had ever experienced broke over her; she passed out, tumbling to the ground, landing not on a cushion of leaves but soundly on her feet on the floor of the Hall of Sorcery. Ignoring the effort breathing required, she whirled around, and sure enough she found Petroc leaning against a pillar, his arms crossed.

“Send me back. You have to send me back, I….”

Kora’s heart seized up as solidly as her lungs had. She stopped herself before admitting she was on guard. Petroc had never demanded she come alone, but would not take kindly to knowing she had company.

“Please, let me go! I’m coming to the mountains. I’m two days north of Podrar.”

“I know. I’ve tracked your progress.”

“Then send me back! I’ll get to the Hall soon enough. I suppose it would be too much to ask you how to find it?”

Petroc smiled, a smile not as cruel or disdainful as Kora would have imagined. Nor was it demented, she took comfort to see. He said, “That’s the reason I summoned you back.”

“Where is the Hall?” Kora demanded.

“West of the Podra. Between the rivers.”

“That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

“The path’s not difficult to find. Completing it, well, that’s something different altogether.”

Kora’s heart, which had relaxed a little, tensed once again. “How many traps have you set?”

“Me? The precautions have been there
for centuries, and I wouldn’t call them traps. T
hey’re more like tests, so that only a sorcerer, and a worthy one, will set foot in the Hall.”

Kora’s mind was reeling. Would she be able to pull Kansten and Lanokas through the obstacles? Would she be forced, after all, to face Petroc alone?

“Any other questions?”

Kora hesitated. She knew she should return to the clearing, but she had heard nothing her entire watch except that quail, and she remembered, all of a sudden, where Petroc’s ancestry lay.

“What do you know about the
Librette
?” she asked. Petroc’s eyes narrowed.

“Why should I tell you that? Why would you even ask?”

“You’re descended from Hansrelto, and Zalski wants the book. He’s been looking for it for weeks. Now he’s setting more men to the search. He wants the thing badly, I think for a special purpose, for a spell he could twist to his own designs.”

Petroc thought for a moment. “I heard stories about the
Librette
growing up. About its magic. I have my suspicions as to what that book contains, and there’s nothing that could serve Zalski but to torture and kill.”

“He can torture and kill just fine right now. Your brother’s a testament to that. Zalski wouldn’t devote the manpower….”

“I don’t disagree. The problem is, if Zalski plans to put one of Hansrelto’s better-known spells to creative use I can’t read his mind. I’m not, thank heavens, that horror of a wife he took.” Petroc stared hard at Kora. “How do you know he wants the book?”

Kora’s eyes went wide. “I don’t remember exactly what….”

Petroc laughed. “You don’t remember? You joined the Crimson League, is what you did. Unfortunately, I can track only you. If you come to my gate accompanied….” He paused. “What is your name again?”

Her voice was defiant. “Kora Porteg.”

“If you come to my gate accompanied, I won’t be amused.”

Petroc waved his arm, muttered something, and everything went black. Kora came to in the forest; she felt something was wrong even before she opened her eyes. She gasped for air, and got nothing. A strangled, choking sound issued from her lips.

Kora was lying on her side, a gag in her mouth, her wrists and ankles tied. Two men in black uniform had already subdued Kansten, who had a nasty cut above one eye, and Lanokas, who had a bruised chin and gashed arm.

The soldiers had found Kora collapsed. Helpless. She should never have wasted time asking Petroc about the spellbook: another deadly error. More lives lost because of her ineptitude. Had Kora been alone she would hardly have cared, but her friends….

As there were three Leaguesmen and two officials, the soldiers had tied Kansten to a tree and gagged her, and now were now binding Lanokas to a birch trunk. They did not seem to recognize him, not as one of the Crimson League’s founding members and certainly not as the dead king’s son. Kansten’s dagger, along with Kora’s knife, Lanokas’s sword, and the contents of one of their sacks, lay strewn across the ground behind the soldiers, not far from Kora; no one had noticed her return to consciousness. She inched toward the nearest weapon, the knife five yards away.

One of the guards, the taller and balder, asked Lanokas, “Who are you? You can’t enter these woods without a permit!”

“I was unaware of that.”

“How can you be unaware? There’s notices plastered across the village!”

The soldier stared intently at the prince. Kora tried in desperation to utter the statue spell against him, with no result, not with a gag in her mouth. Of all the ways to go down, to be arrested by two volunteer army men from the country…. She wanted to weep just to think of it. What would Laskenay say when she heard? And Sedder, how disbelieving he would have been!

The knife was four yards away now. The bald man continued to speak.

“You’re not from here, are you? You’re passing through, an outlaw by the looks of it. The lot of you, what are you wanted for?”

Lanokas said nothing. If Kora could free his hands like she had Laskenay’s he could fight; that was all he needed, free hands. And she had gained another half foot.

The bald soldier turned with a snarl to Kansten, studying her face, hoping to recognize her. He did not. Then his eyes moved to Kora, who stopped inching forward. She saw sweat—or was it dew?—glisten on his head as he lifted her. She tweaked her left ankle as he slammed her to her feet. He stared at her, and no recognition clicked within his face as Kora looked past him to the decaying trees, saw with a start two eyes, then four peer back and draw away. More guards. She struggled not to vomit.  Her captor directed her gaze back to him.

Ask me a question
.
Any question. Take out the gag, take it out!

He opted instead, with a snap of his arm and a dog-like snarl, to knock Kora’s bandana away. He released her with a jolt; she fell back to the ground, landing on her arm.

“Does Zalski know about you?”

The second soldier, whom Kora had not really noticed, spun around with a bow in his hands, aimed it at his partner’s chest. He was thicker around the middle, with thinning hair.

“What do think you’re doing?” snarled the bald man.

“Let them go.”

“Are you insane? Do you know what’s in this for us?”

“Cut them loose or I’ll shoot you.”

The bald man made a desperate dive for his own bow, discarded near Lanokas’s feet, but his fellow soldier proved as good as his word, and an excellent shot. His arrow lodged itself in the first guard’s back while he was spread in the air; the injured man fell across the campfire’s remains with a crunch of leaves and a spattering of ash. Then came more shots from between the diseased birches, two arrows, which struck the standing soldier in the chest. He collapsed with a gurgling sound. Kora’s gag muffled her scream.

Two boys about fifteen years old rushed forward with their bows. They had big ears and wild hair, though one’s was mud-colored, the other’s as blond as Lanokas. The dark-haired boy freed Kansten while his companion removed Kora’s gag.

“Why did you shoot?” Kora shrieked. “He was going to release us! He….”

“We couldn’t hear him. We thought he wanted credit for the arrests.”

The blond boy fumbled with the knot at Kora’s wrists.

“My ankles!” she cried. “Ankles!”

He went for her ankles instead. Kora could move again, and she ran to the soldier who had risen to her defense. He was portly, in his forties, and his face had a bluish tinge that brought Kora immediately to kneel beside him. She did not thin
k; he already was unconscious. A
n incantation from the book of healing spells came tumbling from her mouth.

“
Nosea.”

The ends of the arrows disappeared, but the shafts still protruded from his chest, and the points were still embedded. “
Nosea,”
Kora said again. She held her breath; what was left of the arrows vanished, leaving her staring at open wounds that bled more heavily than ever without obstructions in place.

“
Repara Arteria. Repara Organa.
”

Those spells should have healed damaged organs and blood vessels. The man kept bleeding, but Kora repeated her words for good measure before sealing the puncture wounds. Preventing him bleeding out would do little good if internal injuries caused his death instead.

Kora fell back from the soldier, trying to make sense both of what he had done and what had happened to him. He might be one of those who joined the guard to keep a roof above his family: at least, he wore a wedding band. The fair-headed boy who had cut Kora’s ankles free now released her hands, and she threw two fingers against the portly man’s neck. He had a pulse. Meanwhile, the second teenage boy freed both Lanokas and Kansten, who crowded around the bald soldier and told Kora not to waste her energy when she made as though to join them. She replaced her headwrap and returned to the soldier still alive, the blond boy on her heels.

“How did you…? Did you just heal him?”

“I’m a sorceress,” said Kora. She felt the guard’s pulse again; it seemed a little weaker.

“Then you actually are the Marked….”

“It would seem so,” Kora snapped. The boy, who was bigger than she if one or two years younger, said nothing more but stuck by her side. “My sack,” Kora barked. “The small one, over there.”

He ran for it. Kora rummaged for her canteen, which she half-emptied over the injured man’s face, pouring slowly, trying to bring him to. “You have a name?” she asked the boy.

“Hayden Grissner. That’s my cousin Bidd.”

Hayden started to say something more, but the man he had shot began to stir. With Kora’s help, the soldier sat up. Kansten, Lanokas, and Bidd came to see what was going on.

“I’m sorry,” said Hayden. He gave the man a sip of what was left in the canteen. “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand what you were doing.”