The Magic Council (The Herezoth Trilogy)

by Grefer, Victoria

  “What do they want?” she demanded. “The kidnappers, what do they want? Are they blackmailing the royals?”

  Zacry said, “I haven’t a clue why they did this. I don’t know what makes Rexson think I can help him, but it’s clear he does think that, so….”

  “The king needs us both,” Kora insisted. Not only her forehead, but also her eyes looked red, gleaming with passion, with determination. With envy. “I know him. He’s planning a rescue attempt, that’s why he wants you. Who knows how many are in this faction that took his kids?”

  Vane cancelled his invisibility. The others jumped as he appeared in their midst.

  “Rexson will have me,” said the boy. “I came of age two years ago, and I want to go with Zacry. Kora’s right, the king’ll need more than one sorcerer to get his sons back, and the man’s done a lot for me. I have a debt to him…. I found his letter,” Vane explained.

  Kora’s expression softened a bit, but she told him, “You aren’t going. Your mother would kill me if I let you do this. Her first priority was always protecting you.”

  “It seems to me,” noted Zacry, “that Laskenay’s first priority was helping Rexson. She didn’t have to fight, you know. Knowing what her decision cost her, I’d say what would pain her now would be you leaving your children without a mother like she did, like she felt she had to. You don’t have to. Rexson didn’t send for you.”

  Kora spoke with a clenched jaw. “You have an infant daughter,” she reminded him a second time.

  “I haven’t forgotten that! I’m not the one exiled under penalty of death, and look, the king did send for me. I can’t well ignore him. That would be callous. You’re not suggesting I ignore the man?”

  “Have you talked to your wife about this?”

  “I spoke with Joslyn before I came here. She’s not happy, obviously, but she sees the clear obligation I…. I’m worried about her, Kora. She’s not been having an easy time of it, with the baby. It’s her first, so naturally she’s scared, and now I’m leaving. Will you help her? Let her know she can turn to you, if she needs anything?”

  Kora took a deep breath, to gain some measure of control. She folded her brother in her arms. “Of course Joslyn can come to me. She can come to me in the dead of night if she needs to, or to Mother. You just worry about yourself and those poor boys.”

  Zacry pulled away from her. His eyes grew hard, his face rigid. His hand balled into a fist. “They’re younger than I was,” he said. “Every one of them is. The oldest is.”

  “I know,” said Kora. “I know they are.”

  “Whoever those monsters are, they’ll pay. I’ll make them pay. No one uses children as pawns.”

  Kora bit her lip. “Watch yourself, Zacry. Don’t make this personal.”

  Vane said, “It is personal, for all of us. We know Rexson, and he doesn’t deserve this, let alone his kids.” He caught Kora’s eye. “I know his kids, and I’m going back to help them.”

  Kora grabbed Vane’s hands. “I wish you wouldn’t,” she said. “I really wish you wouldn’t. But I won’t try to stop you. For one, I’m not your mother, I know that all too well. Forgive my forbidding you earlier. It’s not my place to forbid you anything. I was no older than you are now when I joined the Crimson League, and much greener. Much too green.”

  The Crimson League was what the organized resistance movement against Zalski had named itself.

  “Vane’s ready,” Zacry asserted. “He’s ready to return where he belongs. I’d tell him in no uncertain terms if I thought otherwise. He’s growing restless here.”

  Kora still had her fingers wrapped in those of Laskenay’s son. “He is,” she agreed. “I mentioned that to him last week, and we talked the situation over. Discussed him maybe getting on a boat sometime next year.” She pleaded with the boy, “Just promise me you’ll follow Zacry’s instructions. And the king’s.”

  Vane promised. He said, “I won’t forget those stories about my mother. I feel like I’ve gotten to know her through you. When my aunt gave me her letter, it was hard to imagine she’d been a decent person. It was hard to imagine her at all. All I could think was that man had been my uncle.”

  Vane’s voice fell away. Kora kissed him on the cheek, holding back tears. Parker put an arm around her waist, a well-toned arm thanks to his work, to remind her that he, at least, was going nowhere. The gesture bolstered her. “When are you leaving?” she asked her brother.

  “Tonight. We’ll transport. I can make the distance to the coast.”

  “To Herezoth’s coast?” said Parker.

  Traigland was an island, and a good two thousand miles from Herezoth across the straight sea. The journey by boat, however, would have taken at least a month, as the crags and cliffs of an unfortunately placed marine mountain chain meant the water route had to cut far from any kind of direct path.

  “Godspeed,” Kora told the men.

  * * *

  After visiting his sister, Zacry returned home. He found Joslyn in the long, narrow, and unexpectedly clean kitchen. She had straightened up and swept in his absence, he suspected out of nerves, to give her hands something to do. He told her that Vane would travel with him, and neither her coffee-tinted face nor her deep, dark eyes, both typical of Traigland natives, revealed any emotion. She had expected Vane would join his teacher, one way or another, as soon as Zacry had shown her the king’s letter. In fact, she had made them both sandwiches of salted beef and fresh rye bread to take with them for a midnight snack, so they would waste no time heading off. “No use dallying,” she said.

  In response, Vane took her off-guard with a goodbye hug that brought a teary smile to her face. Zacry was holding his kicking and cooing eight-month-old, who had her mother’s skin and rounded nose. The younger sorcerer slipped off, he said to pack a few necessary items, but Joslyn knew him well; his real priority was giving her family a private moment.

  Once she saw his door close down the hall—the kitchen was open to the rest of the house—she asked, “What is it about your homeland? Why is there always such violence?”

  Zacry tossed his daughter in the air, and she laughed as he caught her. “Vee!” she shrieked.

  “It’s like she’s trying to say her name,” he said. He tickled her stomach, and she cooed “vee” again.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” said Joslyn. “She’s saying Vee, not Vye. Her name’s Viola. There’s no Vee in it anywhere, and you’re ignoring my question,” she accused. “Why is there such violence?”

  “Be fair,” said Zacry. “There’s not always unrest in Herezoth. If that were the case, you wouldn’t have dreamed of going there as a girl. It’s been almost fifteen years since the last real threat.”

  “You were in the thick of that too,” said Joslyn. She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Must you be in the thick of this as well? You and your family, why must you tangle yourselves in these horrors?”

  “Joslyn, the king’s a friend. He saved my sister’s life.”

  “I know,” she said. She swallowed. “I know he’s a friend. I know he needs your help, and I know if you refused him, you wouldn’t be the man I fell in love with. You wouldn’t be a person I’d want anything to do with. But Zacry, I was raised in an orphanage. I never had a father, and I don’t want Viola to grow up without….”

  “Take her,” said Zacry. His wife scooped the baby from him, and he wrapped his arms around them both from behind, speaking in Joslyn’s ear.

  “I spent time in an orphanage too, and not like yours. We didn’t study six hours a day, and there were few apprenticeships. There were days I never thought I’d see my family again. I may have had a father, but I lost him young. I know what that does to a child. I promise you, Viola will always have me: always, do you hear? I won’t take unneeded risks. I’ll be back before you know it, good as new. Nothing’s going to happen.”

  “You don’t know that, Zacry.” Joslyn’s voice was firm, but the rate at which her words tumbled forth betrayed
her fear. “You don’t know anything, not who has the king’s children, not how many the foe number, not what powers they have. Don’t you give me empty promises you can only keep by chance. That’s worthless, and it’s not like you.”

  “What should I promise, then?”

  Joslyn shut her eyes. Soaking up his presence, she let his touch, the strength of his arms, his soft breath on the side of her neck overpower her.

  “Promise you’ll do everything you can to aid your king. Promise you’ll act worthy of his brother’s ring, the one he passed to you all those years ago. Promise me you’ll protect Vane.” Vane held a special place in Joslyn’s heart as a fellow orphan. An upstanding woman had raised the boy, not the state, but Joslyn still felt defensive of the young noble. “Promise that whatever may come, whatever tragedies occur, Herezoth and I, I especially, will be able to honor you without shame.”

  “That I can promise,” he whispered. “And I do. I swear I will never shame you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and turned her head to kiss him. Zacry was all she had in life: no family but his, no training beyond moderate skill with a needle and thread that had allowed her to eke out a living before her marriage. Zacry was all she had, and she stood to lose him, but for that moment she had him yet.

  “As far as promises go….” began Zacry.

  “What do you need from me?”

  “I need you to keep busy while I’m away. If you’re busy, you won’t make yourself sick worrying. And I want you to go to Parker and Kora if you need anything: help with the baby, anything at all.”

  “I will,” she said. “I have plenty of trousers and dresses to mend. I’ve actually fallen behind, and I’ll be fine with Viola, you know that. She’s much happier now her cold’s gone. She hardly fusses at all, and most nights now she sleeps through to morning, which means I too get to sleep.”

  “Good,” said Zacry. He kissed Joslyn one last time, then cradled Viola in his arms, stroking her cheek. It was time for her to go to bed. Her eyelids were growing heavy, and within two minutes she was fast asleep, her fist wrapped around Zacry’s index finger. He pressed his lips to her tiny hand as he pried himself loose and handed her back to her mother. “You remember your promises,” he said.

  “And you yours, Love. Watch your step, every step. I don’t think I could live if you never made it back to me.”

  “You could, and you would, if God forbid you had to. You could bear that burden, for the sake of the one you bear right now.”

  Her daughter. Their daughter, with Zacry’s dimples and strong chin. Joslyn sensed Zacry needed a response from her, some kind of affirmation, so she looked him in the eye and said, “For her I could bear that. Your memory would give me the strength.”

  “Joss, you know I’m coming back.”

  “You take your time,” she said. “Don’t get yourself killed rushing the operation. Whether it takes a day or a decade, I’ll be here, Viola too.”

  He kissed her again, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. Without conviction she fussed, “Take your sandwiches and stop that.” He reached for her, and she slapped his hand away with a gentle smile. “Stop that, you! You’ll never leave if we keep this up.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rexson and Gracia

  A three-hour time difference worked in the sorcerers’ favor. It was only nine o’clock when Vane and Zacry appeared on Herezoth’s soil, though in Traigland midnight had come and gone. A few merchant ships were moored off the coast, but no one was on the pier for the lateness of the hour. The land breeze was strong, the air salty, and it stung Vane’s nostrils. He gazed inland at a coastal town’s thin line of houses, visible as a deeper darkness than that of the shell-strewn beach. As the ocean swelled behind him, so did his heart.

  Vane would never leave Herezoth again, not to live elsewhere. That conviction pulsed through his blood, invigorated him despite the hour. After four years away he was home—home—and could ask the question that had been gnawing at him all evening. He finally found the gumption.

  “What did you mean back at Kora’s, when you said the princes were younger than you were? Younger than you were when?”

  Zacry sat upon the shells. The hard, jagged shells: it was a mark of how tired he was. To transport vast distances was no small feat and required great amounts of magic energy, or Lin. Lin was different than physical energy, could not deplete in the same way, but to draw upon its stores as Zacry had done gave one the need to rest. Vane settled beside his teacher, grimacing as a broken bit of conch dug into his hamstring. Zacry said, “It’s not important.”

  “Did someone kidnap you? Who could have wanted to do that, what for?”

  The answer came to Vane before he voiced his question’s final preposition. His chest began to burn with a dull chill. He said, “Zalski did it.”

  Ever since Vane had learned he shared the blood of the dictator-sorcerer he had struggled with this pain in his chest, as though his uncle were a part of him. As though all the twisted ideals the man had held were locked inside his nephew, pushing to get out, seeping through what the boy pictured as a black spot on his heart: a mass of tissue frozen dead or covered with a cold, thriving fungus. So far Vane had kept the rot from spreading, but his greatest fear, the terror that woke him at night with a gasp and prevented him falling asleep again, was the thought that the inky blemish might take him over bit by bit. The prospect that he might turn out like Zalski plagued him. Stories of the sorcerer’s wickedness disturbed the boy, and not only because wickedness ties all sensitive souls in knots. Vane felt responsible for the deeds, as though he was doomed to work his own version of them in the future.

  Zacry knew this better than anyone. Zacry was the only person Vane trusted with his doubts; that was the reason he had tried to dodge Vane’s question. Now he said, “Zalski locked me in a tower when I was twelve. He wanted to teach me magic, and I was testier with him than was wise.”

  Vane felt as though Zacry had slapped him. “You met Zalski, and never told me? Kora refuses to speak of him, you know she does. I never dared to ask Rexson. He lost too much. I never thought that you….”

  “I didn’t tell you,” said Zacry, his voice gruff, “because my meeting him in no way concerns you. That man has nothing to do with the person you are and the things you’ll accomplish in your life. Understand?”

  Vane nodded, but he still felt betrayed. He and Zacry rose, turned invisible, and Vane was the one to transport them to the capital city of Podrar. They materialized outside the gates of the Crystal Palace. The courtyard with its colonnade had lanterns hung on tall steel poles, to give light to the handful of guards in crisp gray uniforms that marched rounds within the walls. By the lanterns’ glow Vane found the empty alcove to the right of the Palace’s main doors, the alcove with no statue to fill it. People said the statue there had been one of the casualties in the final battle to take the building from Zalski: a logical theory enough, as its fellows were all of crystal. Rexson had never ordered the human likeness recarved. Some considered the gap a tribute to his older brother, whose reign had never been. Zalski had killed the crown prince. One day, Vane would find the nerve to ask Rexson who had killed Zalski himself. That was one of the great mysteries of the age.

  Vane and Zacry sneaked their way westward along a wrought-iron fence, turned a corner, and eventually reached a small gate defended by one guard who wore no cap and had gone prematurely gray. He had to hold his lamp; there was no pole here to support it for him. With his free hand, the man drew his sword against the open air when an invisible Zacry said, “You’re expecting me. Or you should be.” Zacry, however, had the foresight to stand out of range, and Vane was behind his fellow sorcerer; he had taken his cues from the barely perceptible sound of Zacry’s boots against the cobblestones. The guard came to his senses with little trouble and opened the gate for Zacry to slip through. Then he knocked four times on the servants’ entrance of the Palace. Vane could hear bolts sliding from within.

 
; Though Vane knew the Crystal Palace he had never seen this wing, which housed the servants’ quarters. The halls were narrower here than in the rest of the building, and architecturally, the Palace was famous for narrow corridors. The rug thickened and turned from a faded green to a sumptuous blue as the guard and sorcerers moved on, single file. The wood of the floor became stone. They climbed two stone staircases, and after about five minutes the guard who guided the visitors stopped before a pair of oaken double doors carved with the Phinnean crest: on the right a maned lion, paw raised to strike, and on the left a grazing lamb.

  The guard walked on. Zacry tapped the left door and waited for the king’s admittance.

  The room Vane entered looked to be the king’s antechamber. The monarch, disrobed for the evening, was clad in a farmer’s cotton undershirt and pants he might have borrowed from a servant. Rexson’s style of dress was the one idiosyncrasy he had maintained from the days of the Crimson League, though few could know he dressed that way. Rich robes typically concealed his inner garments.

  Gracia, his queen, was with him, in a gown with full embroidery. She had taken off her jewelry and let down her chestnut hair to brush her tresses less than thoroughly. She made an impressive figure, human dignity turned vulnerable. The younger sorcerer, who had always loved her for her sincerity, could hardly look at her.

  The four years since Vane last saw the king had aged him much—or, the boy realized, perhaps the last few weeks had done it. Rexson was not yet forty, but the lines around his mouth had deepened as well as multiplied, and grooves to match them set off the corners of his eyes. His blond hair had thinned. He had clearly been sitting at a tall, baroque desk with various rolls of parchment, but had risen to admit his guests.

  “Zacry,” he said, as the sorcerers appeared as from nowhere. “Thank God.”