The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy)

by Grefer, Victoria

  Lanokas put out his hand. “Whatever you’re willing to give, we accept.”

  The League did not waste a moment. Thanks to Petroc, they had to rework a major portion of their plan, with the result that, after days of fruitless pleading, Kora would join Laskenay after all in going after Zalski. No victory had ever felt more hollow. Petroc would take over Kora’s defensive role in the courtyard, from whence, when he chose, he could remove himself via magic. The sorcerer slept at the Hall, but came daily to the clearing and spent the greater part of every hour making everyone ill at ease. Between the greater intensity of the fear, now that the Librette was Zalski’s, and Petroc harping on every deficiency in their strategy, Kora was lucky if she slept three hours a night, lucky if she slept at all. She began to wish, and earnestly, that Petroc had kept the book’s disappearance to himself.

  With six days to the attack and two hours before her scheduled watch, Kora woke from one of her nightmares. This time Lanokas, walking up to Wheatfield, found himself surrounded by black uniforms, then riddled with arrows. The guards had taken Kora alive, and she watched him die, watched as Zalski appeared before her with two stones and a black-covered book, felt him force a ruby in her sweaty palm and fuse her fist….

  Coming to her senses, Kora unclenched her perspiring hands and left the tent. She was not, of course, at Wheatfield, but outside Partsvale. Bennie held guard duty, and a dagger against her wrist, the second of which she dropped when she saw Kora’s frozen expression of horror. The redhead shook with guilt, and admitted in a whisper, “I’m a coward. I’m not brave enough to go into hiding, and not brave enough to attack him, not when he’s got that spell. I’m not even brave enough to kill myself. All night I’ve been trying to find the nerve, and every time I almost do, I think of Zacry, how he looked up to me.

  “I don’t know why I think of him. I don’t know what’s happened to me, but I, I keep wishing you hadn’t rescued me, even though with the book, that means Zalski would have killed me and found you, all of you. Even though it means Zac would still be in that tower. I can’t cry anymore. I haven’t cried in ages, not since Ranler died, and I used to cry all the time when I was alone. I’ve been telling myself I have to avenge him, and Kansten, but that’s bull, it’s bullshit, what can I do for Ranler? For anyone? I’m not a warrior. Lanokas taught me to fight with a sword, but how long would I honestly last against the guard? Five minutes? That never used to bother me, but I’m different now. I’ve changed. It’s not like I’m physically weaker than I used to be. Something’s changed me. I don’t know what it was, but it took away the best part of me, and I can’t go on without that. Kora, I can’t.”

  Kora’s shock dissipated, though gradually. She pulled the girl away from the tents, from the dagger, to the clearing’s edge. “Bendelof Esper, you listen to me: no part of you is missing. Zalski didn’t take your faith. That’s the one part of you that’s untouchable. I don’t care how they tried, he and Malzin couldn’t steal it. I know they couldn’t. You’ve always understood that someone has to stand up to them, to be the Giver’s Instrument. That if you didn’t, no one else would.

  “It’s not fair it has to be us. That’s what you’ve recognized, and it’s true, it isn’t fair, but realizing that didn’t destroy your faith. You still see that someone has to fight. Bennie, that’s why you think of Zac. He made his stand. He told Zalski to go hang himself, isn’t that how he put it? Zac made his stand, and so did you.”

  “When? When did I do anything useful? When I nearly got killed that day Sedder died? When Zalski captured me because I was sleeping?”

  Kora hardened her voice, not to come across as impatient or judgmental—though she feared she might—but rather as resolute, as determined. “When did you stand firm? When you refused to betray us to save yourself. You could have, easily. Zalski told you so flat-out. Your faith gave you strength to refuse him, and I’m telling you, the faith’s still there. If it wasn’t, you’d have gone ahead and slit your wrists. What else could have stopped you? Nothing, that’s what. The Giver’s law forbids suicide, am I right?”

  To sound utterly confident might dispel Bennie’s doubts a bit, that was Kora’s gut feeling, and it proved accurate. The redhead nodded, slowly at first, surprised by Kora’s vehemence. Then a tear slid down her face, and she grew more sure of herself. Another tear came, then a river, as though a dam had broken behind her eyes. “I’m crying,” she said, almost laughing with joy to discover she could. “I’m crying again.” Kora held her and let her weep. Bennie could not stem the flood. “You’re right, it isn’t fair. It’s just not fair! It shouldn’t be us.”

  “At least none of us is alone. We’re together, and we’ll fight together ‘til the end. That’s what Lanokas told me. All of us, I swear that to you.”

  “All right. All right, I…. Kora, what was I trying to do? I wasn’t thinking, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! God forgive me, I’m just so scared! I don’t have magic like you or Laskenay. I can’t defend myself that way. I’m not a man, so I don’t have physical strength like men do. Everyone else, you have a chance, but I can’t fathom how I might live.”

  “We’ll all defend each other, that’s how. It’s the only way anyone might survive. Lanokas is strong: he’ll also be a prime target, perhaps the prime target. I’m a sorceress, sure, but Zalski’s more powerful, and guess who I go after?”

  “You wanted that.”

  “I did. I did, and I was a fool. At least Laskenay won’t face him alone now, there’s that. You do have a point, though: you’ll be the only woman there who can’t use magic. I’ve been so caught up in my own worries I never gave you a thought. None of us did. Bennie, you don’t have to do this. You can take your chances on the run. What isn’t an option is that dagger. You deserve more than that.”

  “I know. I know I do, we all do, that’s why I….” Bennie summoned her strength. “That’s why I can’t desert you all. We have to defend each other, right? Well, when I think about it, Hayden doesn’t have much more experience with a sword than I do. It’s a shame there’s not a post for him to shoot from.”

  “So you’re staying? You’re sure? No more fingering your weapons?”

  “None of that. Kora, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell the others.”

  “I won’t breathe a word,” Kora promised. “What you need to do is focus on yourself. Refind that peace that used to come when you remembered our small wins: the people we helped, the ways the Giver used you as an Instrument. You’ve done so much for my brother alone!”

  “Thank you,” Bennie whispered. “I’ll try, I will. I haven’t been able to think of those people lately. It’s made me jealous. Sick.”

  “Because they’re not here,” said Kora. Bennie stayed up with her through second watch. Concentrating on guard duty, Kora glanced every now and then at her companion, who with no sign of bitterness stared at a tree and remembered who knew what adventure from months gone by. Slowly, perhaps, but clearly nonetheless, Bendelof was coming to terms with what awaited. That was a task each must accomplish alone, in his or her own way. Kora found peace through her brother’s safety, and Laskenay, she imagined, through reuniting with her son. Perhaps Lanokas took strength in what he once told Kora outside Wheatfield, that it was not death that mattered, but how one judged one’s life. Neslan had his poetry, and Hayden, well….

  Hayden was a bit of a mystery. Kora suspected, though, that he had made up his mind to prove his value and his work ethic. The past few days, he had trained unceasingly.

  * * *

  No one felt prepared when the chosen day arrived. How could they, with the multitude of variables they simply could not control—and never would be able to, should they put off the assault for a year? The League was as ready as it could ever be, that was plain. Its members refused to let themselves seek excuses, which would be far too easy to find.

  Laskenay, like her fellow nobles and Hayden, dressed as though to hunt, just as Kora remembered her the first time they had me
t in the woods, when she mistook Zalski’s sister for a man. The only difference was no cap. Kora herself, and Bendelof, dressed like the others; it was the first and last time Kora had worn men’s clothing for League business. Hayden made breakfast, cut up all the overripe fruit no one had eaten, but not even he took one bite. “This is it,” he said. “This really is it.”

  Neslan clapped a hand on his shoulder. “One final mission. Just think: by nightfall we’ll restore order to the kingdom.”

  “We’ll restore the king,” Kora whispered. As the last syllable left her mouth, tasting bitter, acerbic, Petroc appeared before her, transporting from the Hall. It was time to be off.

  Kora’s mouth dropped when she transported to Wheatfield: fifty men waited there, all armed, all trained, waiting to join the Leaguesmen. The number included seven soldiers. “Who’s a father?” Lanokas asked.

  A captain was the father of three. “My wife’s pregnant with our first,” said a militiaman, who was maybe twenty-five. All in all, eight or nine said they had children.

  Lanokas told them, “I can’t accept your help, and I can’t explain why, though I wish I could, sincerely. You deserve the explanation. I don’t take men like you for granted, but your place is with your families, your sons and daughters. Your wives don’t need to be widows. Go back to them.”

  Every father obeyed; a few shook the hands of friends they were leaving behind, and they headed back to Fontferry. Their absence left the League with just over forty men. Lanokas briefed them as to the battle plan, and though some looked shocked, particularly the militia, not one took advantage of the chance the prince offered to back out. While they readied themselves to transport to the Palace courtyard, Laskenay scouted the conditions. “It’s about what we expected,” she said when she returned.

  “How many?” Lanokas asked.

  “Fifteen.” After Bendelof’s escape, Zalski had increased the number of guards outside his palace.

  The volunteers separated into groups. Kora would transport the Leaguesmen first, and Petroc, so that he could return to the barn to bring more men. Laskenay would take the soldiers. The first convoys gathered in tight circles around their respective sorceress; Kora shut her eyes, trying not to feel her heartbeat.

  “Are we ready?” came Laskenay’s voice. Kora said she was. “On the count of three.”

  And so the campaign began. Kora hardly glimpsed the courtyard on that first transport; Neslan and Lanokas, on either side, dropped her hands instantly, and she brought herself back to Wheatfield. Petroc and Laskenay trailed just a second behind. It fell to Kora to return a third time to the barn, for the last set of militiamen. The entire operation took less than a minute, which was lucky, because when she found herself, for the final time, standing on the flagged brown stone near the colonnade, more of Zalski’s men were already streaming from the Palace. She cursed, searching out Lanokas’s blond head in the melee. She found him quickly, took a steadying breath, and took off for the west side of the building, where Laskenay would be waiting.

  The Palace’s west wall, a towering flat surface of polished stone, was set back from the fence but still visible from the street that ran parallel to it, one of Podrar’s major roads. Together, Kora and Laskenay cast a spell that Laskenay herself had written for the occasion: “Crestus Royale Marcum.”

  Before their eyes the wall’s surface became a mural, depicting the royal family’s coat of arms in grandiose scale. The lion’s eyes were the size of Kora’s head, and the lamb was not life-size but four times as large. The sight nearly paralyzed her lungs.

  “That should make an impact,” said Laskenay.

  “Let’s go,” said Kora. The plan was for the two of them to slip inside the Palace and confront Zalski there. As Kora spun around, a guardsman with a bow collapsed on the cobblestone path that led to the courtyard proper and the Palace doors. Neslan stood above him, his face horrified, his blade dripping. He moved his eyes from his weapon to his compatriots. Only Laskenay was unphased, looking as pleased at her spell’s success as she did determined to triumph in every segment of the operation.

  “He followed you,” said the noble.

  Kora tried to thank him, but the words got stuck in her throat. Poor Neslan! His place was at the university, not a battlefield. He looked just as lost as Kora felt, which made her all the more grateful when he took the initiative to walk up and pull her forward, back toward the fight. She squeezed his hand; he squeezed hers back, and her nerve returned. Laskenay at their heels, they ran flat-out.

  The courtyard was full of dueling bodies, living bodies. Zalski’s elite guard were true warriors, utilizing the colonnade’s pillars for defense, and Petroc performed his support role for the League with surprising skill, so that few had yet died, and none that Kora recognized—not that she had time to examine the scene. She and Laskenay bolted for the oaken doors, which someone had thrown wide open to allow Zalski’s men a quick exit. The two were four yards from their goal when out of nowhere, a bolt like black lightning struck Laskenay from point-blank range.

  Laskenay grabbed at Kora as she went rigid, then collapsed. More from instinct than thought, Kora threw her arms in front of herself before a similar bolt, this one red, struck her. It bounced off her crimson shell and hit the Palace, shattering a statue and blackening the building’s white stone.

  What would that spell have done to me? What happened to Laskenay? Good God….

  The clang of metal had swallowed Zalski’s first incantations. Kora neither marked his third, but she knew it was Desfazair when he materialized three feet to her right. Laskenay began to stir, looking ill. Zalski cast a spell to bind her, but Kora blocked it with a silver shield. Another incantation from Zalski, and the shield evaporated with a puff of smoke; halfway risen, with a knee and hand still on the brick-laid ground, Laskenay tried to conjure her own golden barrier against her brother’s magic. Nothing happened. Zalski smirked as she spoke her spell again to no avail, and she fell back, astonished.

  “Now you understand your fault against my nephew. How dare you deprive him….”

  “Code black!” Kora yelled. “Code….”

  Petroc transported to her side before she even repeated the phrase that signified one sorcerer was down. Zalski studied the newcomer with a disturbed look.

  “Who the devil are you?”

  Petroc’s features became canine. Kora half-expected him to growl; he did not, it so happened, but speaking through gritted teeth was close enough. “You murdered my brother,” he said.

  “Ahhhh….”

  Both men forgot Kora. They circled each other like vultures or wolves, eyes locked. Zalski smiled, intrigued by the thought of a challenge. He let Petroc attack first, and Petroc let fly the same type of red bolt that Kora had seen earlier. Zalski deflected it despite the close range, sending the spell in the direction of the Palace, where it blew one of the doors to pieces. Kora ducked to avoid being hit in the head by a burning strip of wood the size of her arm.

  Zalski announced, “Hansrelto’s pain spell. They left the Librette with you, then.”

  “That book is mine. My heritage. I will retrieve it.”

  “You’ll never leave this courtyard,” said Zalski. He cast Pulgaqua. Petroc tried to make the water jet vanish, then redirected its course to one of the elite guard when that failed. Zalski broke off the spell, but not before a militiaman stabbed the guardsman through the armpit.

  Meanwhile, Kora turned to Laskenay, who still looked shell-shocked, though she had risen from the ground. “I’m worthless,” Zalski’s sister warned her.

  “You always were.”

  Kora balled her fist at the silky, feminine voice. She whirled on her heel to face Malzin. “That’s cocky,” she said, “considering I can still blow you to kingdom come.”

  “Of course you can. But you won’t. You haven’t the courage to truly use your magic.”

  Malzin was slapping her sword against her palm. She advanced on Laskenay, Kansten’s amulet swinging on
her neck, while Kora, thinking fast, used Mudar to arm her mentor with a blade, the sword of the guardsman Zalski unwittingly helped kill with Pulgaqua. Laskenay blocked the blow, her resolve renewed and her eyes cold. She was worthless no longer. “You will not interfere,” she told Kora, and dodged a second strike. “Under any circumstance.” Biting her lip, Kora turned her attention to Zalski and Petroc.

  For two reasons Kora had hoped to fight Zalski indoors: to prevent his escape, or at least make it more difficult, and to keep him out of spell’s reach of the militia, the League, and its soldiers, who would be outnumbered by the guard without Zalski himself to offer his men support. She would never forget her father’s stories of how Hansrelto killed dozens with each incantation, and Zalski, with the Librette…. Kora did not want him emulating the ancient. Her fears, however, seemed unfounded at present. Zalski was absorbed mind and soul in his duel; the sorcerers cast incantations fast and with intensity. One side of Petroc’s robe had burned where a spell gone awry lit it aflame. A gash across Zalski’s upper chest was staining an increasing portion of his tunic. Unfortunately, the wound seemed superficial and did nothing to impede him. What did slow him down was Petroc shielding himself against a second attempt at drowning and, almost simultaneously, hitting his foe with a levitation spell, the one with which he struck Kansten at the Hall of Sorcery. Zalski’s feet flew up until he hovered, horizontal, his arms pasted to his side. Petroc conjured seven arrows and sent them, in a bundle, at the man who had cut out his brother’s tongue, but by the time they arrived Zalski had rotated upside down, where he could see his robed foe, and conjured his usual black shield, which also blocked Kora’s unmanned sword from harming him. He started casting even before his body was level; the spell took effect with milliseconds to spare.

  Those milliseconds were all Zalski needed. His shield flickered, and he vanished Kora’s blade before it swiped at him again. Kora cast her blinding spell, but at a moment when the barrier was intact. Zalski hit the ground and evoked his shield again as she tried to render him harmless with Estatua; Petroc cast the pain spell a second time, and the scarlet bolt shattered Zalski’s defense as it rebounded to hit a militiaman in combat with a guard. That guard stabbed his opponent through the neck when he stumbled in agony.