The Magic Council (The Herezoth Trilogy)

by Grefer, Victoria

  “I guess so,” said Kansten. She still looked upset, but she had stopped crying, and Joslyn could tell that the girl would accept her lack of sorcery in time.

  Perhaps I can be a teacher, be a mother. Perhaps I can learn.

  Kansten’s face had turned red, Joslyn thought from all the crying, until she said, “I’m sorry I came in here. I know I’m not supposed to. Tommy wanted to see the room.”

  “It’s all right,” said Joslyn.

  “Please don’t tell my parents.”

  “I won’t,” consented Joslyn. “But you should. You really should talk to your mother about this. She’ll help you feel better about it.”

  “Mom’s gone,” said Kansten. “That’s why Grams brought us over today.”

  Joslyn’s deep eyes looked troubled. “Gone?”

  “Father said she’s ill. Nothing serious, but they thought she should go to the coast for a bit, to keep us healthy and take in the salty air.”

  Kora’s gone to Herezoth.

  Joslyn was torn between relief that Zacry would have more help, and horror at the idea of what Kora in particular was risking going back.

  They’ll be all right, the both of them. They’ve been through worse than this, haven’t they?

  “When your mother gets back,” said Joslyn, her voice distant, “you should tell her what happened. Especially if you’re still upset about it.”

  “I might,” said Kansten. “I feel a bit better already, talking to you. For now, I think, I should go find Tommy. I frightened him a bit.”

  Joslyn said, “That sounds like a wonderful idea. Go play. Be the Kansten we all love so much.” The girl gave her aunt a hug before marching to the door, determined not to let her disappointment keep her down—or at least to try.

  * * *

  August had slept in Vane’s room that first night in Traigland, or rather, tried to sleep. The sorcerer kept things tidy, except for some books spread out on the rug and some half-whittled figures the girl assumed he was making for Kora’s sons. August tossed the stray wooden scraps he’d left lying about through the window for him.

  Vane’s furniture looked secondhand, and August resisted the temptation to root through his drawers and cabinets, though she longed to discover more about him. In some ways he seemed just like her, and in others an utter mystery of a human being. How well did Vane know the king? Extremely, she imagined, if they had spent a month together on a ship. If Vane had come to Traigland at age thirteen, where had he lived before that? What talents did he have, and what work did he do? He couldn’t stay with Zacry forever. When he left this place, would he remain in Triflag or go back to Herezoth? Would he take up his place at court? Continue to use magic?

  She wished he could have seen her off from the Palace, and refused to think he’d forgotten or not bothered. She accepted without deliberation that Zacry had come for her sooner than expected, and that Vane had shown up later, not knowing she was gone. She contemplated no other explanation, but still she tossed all night.

  For Ursa’s sister, the morning passed without event. Ilana Porteg brought her grandchildren over, and August spent the early hours watching Melly, Viola, and Tressa, Kora’s youngest, who were all in good moods and miraculously fell asleep for naps around eleven, Melly in August’s arms. Kansten, chipper and energetic when August fixed her hair, had low spirits after lunch. August asked what she wanted to do, and she responded without real interest. “We could go for a walk in the woods, I guess. To get out of the house.”

  So August, Kansten, and the princes headed off to the woodlands that bordered Zacry’s property, leaving Kora’s younger children to draw models of a tree house their father had promised to build them. The afternoon was cloudy, and a slow, steady breeze disheveled the twists of hair August had pinned to Kansten’s head. The girl hardly noticed. She dragged her feet and kept a few paces back from Rexson’s boys, who climbed low trunks, dueled with sticks, and searched for toads. Hune chided Valkin for poking a great fat one he found hiding in some leaves.

  “You’ll hurt him,” said Hune.

  “He’s just a great blob,” said Valkin. “I want to see if he’ll jump.”

  “He is funny-looking,” Hune admitted.

  Valkin jabbed the amphibian one last time, and it jumped straight at Neslan, who stumbled back and tripped on a rotting log. His brothers laughed. Even Kansten cracked a smile, until Neslan moved to get up and recoiled, nursing his left wrist, which had slid beneath a raised tree root half-hidden by leafy weeds.

  “Ow!” yelled the boy. Then everyone saw a thin strip of color cut through the grass. As August watched in terror, and Kansten in fascination, Valkin used his magic to fling the snake repeatedly against an oak, bashing its head. He let it fall at the base of the trunk, and Hune took a step toward it, but August swooped upon him, holding him back. “It might not be dead.”

  “Oh it’s dead,” said Valkin.

  Bands of varying hue and width spread over the snake’s body. Hune stared at it, transfixed, and chanted, “Red against black, a friend of Jack. Red against yellow, kill a fellow.” The serpent’s red rings touched yellow ones. Hune started. “Oh no!” he shrieked. “Oh no, that, that’s a coral snake. It’s poisonous!”

  “How do you know?” asked Valkin.

  “The rhyme. The rhyme lets you know. Rock taught it to me.”

  Everyone—August, Kansten, Hune, Valkin—they turned like a single entity to Neslan. Still cradling his wrist, he lay crumpled on the grass. His four companions towered over him like a wave, and his head felt funny, as though a great amount of water were sloshing around his brain.

  “Is that snake really poisonous?” asked Kansten. Valkin threw her aside to get to his brother.

  Hune asked, “Did it bite you?”

  “Let me see,” said Valkin. “Let me see your wrist.”

  The boy only drew his arm in tighter.

  “Ryne, let us see,” pleaded Kansten; that was the name Neslan went by. Then August let out an ear-splitting, blood-curdling whistle.

  “Quiet!” she demanded. “Give me room.”

  The three healthy children pulled back. Gently but forcefully, August resisted Neslan’s attempts to throw her off and extended his arm; two red puncture marks marred his inflamed wrist.

  Hune gasped, and his eyes filled with tears. Kansten bit her lip, standing tense. Valkin cleaned his glasses on his pants, as though the lenses were dirty and making him see wounds on his brother’s skin that weren’t there.

  “Kansten,” August called. “Your grandma, she’s your mother’s mom?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Kansten asked.

  “Does she do magic?”

  And Kansten understood. Magic was Ryne’s only hope. “I don’t know…. Maybe. I’ve never seen her do it, but she is my mother’s mom. If only Mom was here! She was here yesterday. Why couldn’t this have happened then?”

  “Let’s go,” said August. “We’ve got to get to Ilana, and fast.” She asked Neslan, “Can you walk?”

  “I’m not sure,” said the boy. “My head’s fuzzy. I feel out of breath.”

  Hune bowed his head. Valkin shook his in denial. August stooped over without a glance at the other children and took Neslan in her arms. He was dead weight. Her muscles were burning within seconds, but she stumbled off in the direction of Zacry’s house.

  One foot forward. Just one more. Faster. Breathe, don’t forget to breathe….

  Valkin, Hune, and Kansten ran after her. “Relax,” she told Neslan, who began to squirm and sweat. “Don’t struggle, or I’ll drop you. Think of happy things and be brave, like Sir Brogle. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” Neslan rasped.

  “We’ll get you to the house, and everything will be just fine.”

  They arrived in fifteen minutes. August’s arms were turning numb, and she ignored the pain of an ankle she had tweaked just before leaving the woods. The children, with the house in sight, ran on ahead of her. Kansten bur
st into the kitchen, where Ilana was fixing something for the kids to eat come dinnertime, some kind of hearty soup by the smell. Panting, red-faced, the girl grabbed her grandmother’s dress by the collar as Neslan’s brothers came tromping in behind her. They barely all fit in the narrow space. Down the hall, two babies cried in the bedroom, where Joslyn was trying to calm them.

  “Can you do magic?” Kansten asked.

  Ilana did a double take. “I’ve never tried. It’s nothing I ever set store by. Why, in the Giver’s name?”

  “My brother,” said Valkin. “A snake bit him, a poisonous one. He needs help, needs magic. He’s not breathing well.”

  Ilana dropped her ladle on the floor.

  “Uncle Zac has spellbooks,” Kansten announced. She pulled her grandmother toward the hall. “In his office, he’s got tons of them. Come on, Grams. We’ve got to find one that’ll help Ryne.”

  Ilana stopped short, though Kansten kept tugging on her arm. “Boys,” she asked, “is your brother here?”

  “August’s with him,” said Hune.

  “Go find them,” Ilana directed. “Stay with them. It’ll comfort Ryne to have you near him.”

  Kansten gave her grandmother a huge yank. “The office,” said the girl. “The spellbooks. Who knows how long it’ll take to find the right one?” She didn’t dare consider the right one might not be part of her uncle’s collection.

  Kansten found the office as she had left it that morning, with a spellbook open on the desk. She climbed up on the armchair and turned to the basic healing spell she had first tried to cast. “This one,” she said. “Try this on my knee.”

  “Kansten, dear….” Ilana’s face was almost as ashen as her hair. “I’m not necessarily able….”

  “That’s what we have to check. Try to heal up my knee. If you’re a sorceress like Mom, the scrape’ll go away.”

  Ilana took a deep, steadying breath. “Kura-la,” she said. Kansten’s leg stung for a second, then felt oddly warm. New skin stretched over her shallow wound. Ilana clutched the desktop with white knuckles. “Thank God,” she murmured. “Thank the Giver.”

  “Grams, could that spell help Ryne?”

  “I don’t know, dear. It would close the wound, I think, but it’s not the wound that’s hurting him. It’s the toxin. We need a spell to eliminate the toxin. Your mother says some man-made poisons are immune to magic, but I don’t suppose a natural venom, one from a snake…. Oh, where are your uncle’s spellbooks? He has so many volumes!” She turned desperately from shelf to shelf.

  “They’re here,” Kansten said. “Behind the desk, the grubby ones on the bottom shelf.”

  Ilana raised an eyebrow, and Kansten shrunk back in shame, but no one made further comments. There was no time.

  “I’ll look through the book that’s out. You skim the titles of the others,” Ilana ordered. “Look for words like healing, or emergency.”

  Kansten leapt from her chair and raced to her uncle’s books. Her frustration at being ordinary, her fear of punishment for having snooped in Zacry’s office, all that dissipated, replaced by the need to save Ryne. She flung four or five spellbooks to the floor with a sweep of her arm. They were old, and faded, and difficult to read, but not dusty. She pulled the first open and saw, more as a result of the diagrams than words, that the spells were for house repair and construction. On to the second: this one frightened Kansten. The pictures showed some minor disfigurements and attacks. Horrified, she pushed the tome away and turned to a third, which had a plain leather binding. The first page revealed, in a swoopy, delicate hand, what looked to be a title. Kansten tried to read the faded script.

  “Urgent….” she read. “Grams, this is healing magic.”

  Ilana hurried over. “Let me see that,” she demanded, ripping the book from her granddaughter. “Urgent Situations, Helpful Magic. I was sure your uncle had a first aid book somewhere. I just pray it has a proper spell….”

  Plopped cross-legged on the rug, Kansten beat her fist repeatedly on her knee. She watched as Ilana carried the book to the desk. The middle-aged matron ignored her son’s armchair, standing over the collection of spells, and read with an intensity as feverish as she imagined that poor boy must be. After three or four minutes and perhaps thirty pages, Ilana clutched her chest, and Kansten hopped up. “Is that it?” she asked. “Did you find it?”

  “This spell counteracts snake, spider, and scorpion venom.”

  “That’s perfect!” Kansten cried.

  Ilana closed the book around her finger to mark the page, and she and Kansten ran to the small, somber living room. August had set Joslyn to keeping Kora’s younger children out, so only she and Neslan’s brothers were crowded around the settee where the injured boy lay, hiding the upholstery’s light wear.

  Neslan’s face was pale. Sweat covered his forehead, and he was struggling more to breathe than he had been. August propped his chest up with a pillow, which helped a bit, but his eyes wouldn’t focus. He looked minutes away from losing consciousness.

  “Is that a spellbook?” Valkin asked. “Do you have a spell?”

  “I have a spell,” said Ilana. “I’ve never used magic. I just hope mine’s strong enough to cast it.”

  “Try,” August urged. “Please try. It can’t make anything worse.”

  Everyone watched with bated breath as Ilana laid the book on the settee’s arm and took Neslan’s clammy hand. “Veneno Nofunct,” she said, staring at his swollen and bruised wrist. “Veneno Nofunct.”

  “Did it work?” asked Hune, his blue eyes huge. “Will he get better?”

  It was impossible to say. Neslan looked more comfortable—his breath came easier, and his muscles seemed to lose some of their rigidity—but whether Ilana’s magic had saved him, or prevented some degree of permanent damage, only time would reveal.

  August consoled Hune with a shoulder pat while Ilana cast the anti-venom spell again, and then the spell she had used on Kansten, to close the puncture wounds and reduce swelling. Lastly, the matron used a spell she had found to prevent infection, just for good measure.

  “Snakes are filthy creatures,” she said. “A lot of good it’ll do if he survives the poison only to lose his arm, even his life, a week or two down the road.”

  Valkin noticed how chapped his brother’s lips were, how sweat had soaked his shirt. “He needs water,” said the prince.

  “Then let’s get him some,” said Kansten. She led Valkin to the kitchen, where they prepared a glass of water from Joslyn’s half-filled well bucket without a word. As they walked out, the prince gazed with guilt at his companion.

  “Will you get in trouble? For showing your grandmother those books?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Kansten. “Everyone’s too worried about Ryne.”

  “I’ll tell her it was me who wanted to go in there.”

  “We’re in the clear,” Kansten assured him. “I just hope your brother is too.” She paused before asking, “You all have magic? All three? I saw what you did to that snake.”

  Valkin tried to explain, “We do. I mean, Ryne and I do. We make objects move.”

  “Objects like animals,” said Kansten, her heart sinking. Even Tommy had magic, even this stranger who had come from Herezoth for no one knew how long. No wonder the boy could treat sorcery like a joke, or a game….

  “My father tells us not to use magic. Or to talk about it.”

  “Who am I going to tell?” Kansten demanded.

  No one spoke much the rest of the day. The afternoon passed in silent vigil over Neslan, whose color began to return and whose respiration, by nightfall, was almost at a normal rate, though he still had fever and his pulse was faster than it should have been. He was stiff, and achy, but everyone’s great fears were assuaged. He even walked to the washroom that evening, with minimal help from Valkin. Ilana seemed to have done enough to save his life.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Gambling on the Past

  While August was struggling t
o get Neslan back to Zacry’s house, Vane was toting two women’s travel cases down the narrow passages of the Crystal Palace, heading toward the queen’s chamber. Gracia had invited one of her sisters for an extended stay, for her counsel and companionship. The women were in the throne room, receiving pleas for alms or the forgiveness of debts, or for clemency in the case of a relative imprisoned for some crime or other. It was the one day a year the queen was accustomed to hear such tales personally, the eve of her birthday, and though at present the plights of strangers were far from the center of her thoughts, she had decided, along with Vane, that altering the normal course of events would only arouse frustration, resentment, and possibly suspicion. As guards literally lined the throne room walls, Vane knew no spy of the Enchanted Fist would attempt anything threatening that day, so after an hour of watching proceedings he slipped off, his presence unmissed. He was dressed as a servant, to fade into the background. That was how he’d been hassled into carrying bags.

  The quickest route to the royal chambers led Vane past his guest room—or rather, at this point, the room where he stored a few things, as he’d kept vigil the past night in the queen’s antechamber. Before the door, he could have sworn he heard a rustle from inside. He halted, and told his tired brain to stop imagining things. He was about to continue down the thick blue rug when a second noise sounded, as though someone were rooting through his bag.

  Slowly, silently, Vane set the luggage against the wall, then slid the key to his room from his pocket, just in case he might need it. He tested the door with a steady hand, and it gave easily. “Lassmagico,” he yelled, sliding into the room, prepared to duck or to dodge a blade or projectile.