The King's Sons (The Herezoth Trilogy)

by Grefer, Victoria

  A young woman named Gertrude, some kind of seer related to Terrance, had taken his loss hard. She cried much, Kora saw, and then took on a steely expression that meant trouble for Oakdowns. She told Linstrom the king was to blame for Terrance’s death; she was out for vengeance, and thanks to her power to see the future a minute in advance, Linstrom wanted her in his vicinity. She hesitated not at all to stand beside him.

  As for Lottie, her disappearance was far more troublesome to Linstrom. Not in her home, not at the Hall…. Her cottage held no signs of a struggle, but that didn’t mean the king hadn’t sent Ingleton after her, either to kill her or to handle her arrest. He preferred to think the first, for a number of reasons: he didn’t much like the thought of her suffering torture, no more than he cared for the prospect of her telling the king, under duress, every blasted bit of information she had concerning the Hall’s recent use. At least Linstrom, legitimately, could use her fate to press upon everyone his logic for the night’s excursion and the dire need for success.

  Could Lottie have betrayed him, have gone to the king’s men? Logistically, it was possible. But had she? That seemed unlikely. He knew Lottie, knew her well, and she was not a woman to sleep with a man she despised enough to turn over to the crown. She was too simple and too sincere, and she had slept with him just the day before. Linstrom had no doubt of Lottie’s feelings where he was concerned, and even had she turned traitor, unthinkable as that was, his troops were better off thinking her a martyr. He would paint her as such.

  Kora had tracked the man’s thoughts all day, so Linstrom’s instructions held no surprises: kill Ingleton, take every one else alive if possible. If not, do whatever was needed to ensure no one escaped. The king, said Linstrom, knew about them. He would come after them all, had already begun that process with Lottie. The anonymity they had hoped to maintain—the doubt as to whether they were the sorcerers Rexson had insulted or were others acting on their behalf, angered on principle—had been ruined. Their only hope was to set their eyes on the throne itself. To seize the crown before Rexson seized them.

  Linstrom had the sense not to mention Esclavay, not just then. A number of the men and women who stood before him would have qualms about feeding the slave trade. Better to let them pass the point of no return before revealing all; they would reach that mark soon enough. They would need money, for mercenaries, and had one option to contract that volume of coin. He would use Agatha to persuade the others when the time was right. (He glanced, as he thought the name, at a rust-haired woman who held herself proudly, even wearing old riding gear.) Agatha was practical above all else, and not afraid to champion any duty, no matter how unpleasant, that would serve the greater good of Linstrom’s men. She kept to Linstrom’s side as long as that was feasible, for he asked her to head up her own contingent of assailants. Any distress she showed over Lottie was faked, and not well, to Kora’s judgment.

  * * *

  Back at Oakdowns, the general had some three hundred soldiers at his command, all from the barracks and the Crystal Palace. The manor’s defense would have numbers on its side, but whether numbers could outweigh Linstrom’s advantage in magic remained a mystery. If nothing else, the king’s men knew Linstrom’s battle plan and would meet him with all the ferocity they could muster.

  Jane, Lottie, and Zacry, all together, had cast Jane’s new spell on everyone to protect against the enemy’s befuddlement magic. To what degree that protection would hold, no one could say, but Jane vowed it would negate most confusion spells in full and the worst effects of the strongest. As he’d promised, Vane had a spell to secure Oakdowns from Linstrom’s detection band, so the throngs lurking inside—as well as on the grounds, in gardener’s sheds, privies, and the carriage house—wouldn’t frighten off the invaders.

  Vane had cast a spell to alter Kora’s appearance. It straightened and darkened her hair, erased her crow’s feet, and reshaped her nose. While it could do nothing about her ruby, a simple charm she had used many a time assured her bandana would not rip away. She doubted her own children would recognize her.

  Thanks to Kora, the king’s men knew Linstrom would open two fronts. He himself would lead a small group to attack the stables and subdue its caretakers while the rest began with the manor, gaining entry from any doors excluding the main ones, which were visible from Oakdowns’s iron fence. What Linstrom didn’t know was that, instead of unsuspecting, unarmed horse groomers, he would find the king himself awaiting him, with Vane, Thad, Kora, and a host of uniformed soldiers.

  Zacry had wanted to join that group, but the king refused at Kora’s behest. She wanted Lottie nowhere near Linstrom, as much as that was possible, and Lottie was Zacry’s partner. Instead, Rexson put Zacry in charge of magical operations at the manor proper, to work hand in hand with the scarred but vigorous general, who was clearly in his element.

  Gratton let out the strongest oaths Kora had ever heard when the king directed him to stay with Hune, instead of ordering the prince away. The king pulled Gratton and Kora aside and repeated, so that no one could overhear, “Protect my son, Gratton. And Kora’s two. They may be sorcerers, but they’re the youngest men here. Keep them together, all three, and stay with them. I’d entrust their welfare to no one but you.” That gave Kora some comfort, barely.

  Rexson’s group moved to the stables before dark. Vane maintained normal lighting there, four strong oil lamps that gave good visibility and dispelled shadows as night dropped upon them. Departing servants had taken as many horses as possible, but a small number—Hune’s horse among them—remained in their stalls.

  The stables consisted of a long, wooden building with many windows and a straw-strewn central aisle. A second story housed quarters for the stable hands; on the ground floor, stalls for Vane’s carriage horses stood to the left and right with waist-high doors all latched. A locked cabinet near the entrance held brushes, saddles, troughs, and buckets. Soldiers hid themselves in the stalls, along with the king, who as a renowned swordsman would join their ranks and had even donned their uniform as a disguise.

  Kora had stationed Rexson in a stall, and he’d accepted the assignment; he would be safest tucked away there, as Linstrom hoped to avoid all injury to Ingleton’s horses, which could be sold. The double doors would be Linstrom’s entry point, so Vane and Kora positioned themselves behind them. Kora stalked the foe with her chain while Thad warned the duke, “You’ll be seeing quite a bit of my mug tonight. Blame your wife for the inconvenience.”

  “You promised her not to leave me. Well, you’ll be just as annoyed by my huge eyes before we’re done as I am with your ridiculous moustache.”

  Thad protested, marching off to his stall, “The moustache gives me character.”

  Then the wait began. Kora had always grudged waiting when the League set an ambush, but at least tracking Linstrom (after expressing a desire to pray, to explain why she knelt) served to distract her thoughts.

  Linstrom had chosen two sorcerers to accompany him, armed with a battleaxe and sword. That meant they would be casting those strength spells Lottie had demonstrated. Among others with lesser magic, he had two swordsmen who flew and Gertrude, gifted with foresight as well as, apparently, a bow and arrow. While her power was limited to the minute to come and precluded foreknowledge of death, as she’d reminded Linstrom, she would ruin the surprise of the king’s army.

  That amount of force to come against defenseless stable hands was excessive, to Kora’s mind. But then, Linstrom needed a show to convince the handful of servants he expected to find to surrender, didn’t he? He needed them alive. Needed slaves. He also needed them secured, so they posed no danger of sounding an alarm.

  As Linstrom’s army formed ranks to transport to Oakdowns—he had walked his sorcerers by earlier in the day, forcing a pause in the manor’s staff evacuation—Kora extinguished and relit the lamp nearest her with two quick spells. That was a signal to Vane, the king, and Thad that their opponents were on their way. Arms trembling, she then rem
oved the chain from around her neck; years ago, Zalski’s first general had almost strangled her with the thing. Why court that death again?

  Ideally, Linstrom would have entered the stables before his men, unsuspecting, for Vane and Kora to hit him with killing spells. All afternoon he had planned to walk into the king’s trap, but thanks to his archer’s foresight, during his trek from Oakdowns’s gardens he must have learned a battle waited a minute or so in the future. He adjusted his strategy.

  Kora stepped toward Vane as the stables glowed an eerie shade of blue: the color of a clear winter sky, one that had no place on a summer night. He motioned her back. That glow was a different hue from a sound barrier, but Kora imagined it would function as well to seal the stables’ occupants inside. This was not supposed to happen….

  Linstrom tried to light the building. Kora heard his incantation, Fwaig Commenz, through the gap beneath the doors. Vane, however, had protected every inch of his estate from fire a decade ago, and his magic proved its worth; Linstrom’s attempts at arson made the walls shudder for a good twenty seconds, but burned nothing. The greatest danger was the cabinet toppling and crushing Vane, so Kora stuck it to the wall with the same spell she used to keep her bandana on her head.

  The horses whinnied in a panic as the stables shook. They were so loud no one could give instructions, so Vane made his way to them down the straw-covered aisle. He nearly lost his footing as the floorboards splintered, and when the horses started screaming louder, he cried “Contfabla!” various times. The silence after his muting spells sped Kora’s heart.

  “Don’t worry,” Vane told his allies, making his way to the front of the building. “This is all show. He can’t burn us out. He’ll give up the attempt and come to us, just as we want.”

  Kora whispered to Vane, “You reinforced the windows here? Like in the manor?” Vane’s horror-stricken eyes gave her all the response she needed. Dread sunk upon her heart, but she turned her gaze to the double wooden doors she must defend, fighting to keep her balance as the stables shook, then settled.

  One second all was motion; the next a stillness descended to throw Kora to her knees. Vane fell back against the cabinet. The day-like glow of Linstrom’s first spell disappeared, leaving ample light from the wall lamps. Kora had hardly risen to conjure her crimson shell when her worst fears came to pass.

  Windows shattered in every stall as the double doors blew open. Kora did not expect the flying swordsmen to enter from the second floor, and she and Vane, who had shielded himself with a spell, missed an easy opportunity to blast them back up.

  The rest of Linstrom’s men climbed into stalls where the king’s men had unwittingly trapped themselves. The sounds of men grappling, swords crashing, and arrows splitting the air took over. First things first: the flying maniacs. This was no time to play nice, so Kora broke the first’s neck with a severing spell, and he plummeted into the aisle after bouncing off a shut stall door.

  All the king’s soldiers must aim to kill, including his sorcerers. A bound man could be freed; one magically frozen could be restored to cognizance. Kora must ensure that Linstrom’s men, once overpowered, couldn’t aid the lunatic a second time.

  That was why, with his ice blue shield steadied, Vane killed the other man in flight. Blood rained on the straw as he sliced open the airborne assailant’s chest, and Kora watched the corpse tumble into a central stall. Then, Vane at her side, she started down the aisle.

  In the first set of stalls Rexson had killed a bowman, though he’d taken an arrow in the shoulder. No time to heal him yet; that wound was not life-threatening. Kora yelled at him to lie back and wait, and he obeyed, his face twisted in pain. Across from him, a red-eyed axeman had made quick slaughter of two men in uniform and blown their wooden door to pieces as he made an exit. Vane cast a shield to protect himself from shards, and Kora shouted to the duke, “Get him casting. Get his axe from him. Linstrom’s mine!”

  Before she could progress farther into the stables, Thad Greller rushed past her to aid Vane. At the same moment a red-eyed swordsman sent more uniformed corpses flying over the door of a stall he then leapt over. Rexson’s living soldiers jumped into the aisle to surround him, to take him on together. It was their only chance.

  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?”