“Let him think me a coward. Let him underestimate….”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Porteg. You might think you’ve seen enough to know what he’s capable of….”
“I’ve been in a raid. An ambush. Rescued Wilhem just to watch him die. And that little chat with Zalski and Malzin…. I have a pretty good idea what….”
“Malzin?” said Menikas. “Was she there? She didn’t touch you at any point?”
“She wouldn’t deign to come near me, don’t worry.”
Laskenay joined them, they lagged behind the others, and Kora kept answering Menikas, though she left out all mention of learning his true identity. His domineering manner irked her less than before, now she knew where it came from. Laskenay listened with him but said nothing. They both looked concerned at how shaken Kora seemed, especially when she started avoiding Lanokas with no clear cause. For the journey’s duration, Kora only spoke to him when she had to, though she did try to keep from sounding bitter on those occasions.
The League reached Yangerton at sundown on the third day, and everyone, Kora included, was too exhausted to do anything but wash and bless the opportunity to sleep on an actual mattress. The next morning Kora woke refreshed, surprised to find the change of scene had lightened her antipathy toward Lanokas. His presence did not annoy like before, and she wished him good morning without his speaking first. Kansten pulled her aside before he could reply.
“You still planning to enchant my amulet?”
“Which book was the spell in?”
“The Librette, I think.”
Kora’s heart grew light. After all she had griped to Lanokas about secrets, she would be a hypocrite to cast that spell without Laskenay knowing. Now she saw that she could not.
“I’ll do it today, if I can. I’ll need the spell from Laskenay, though. She’s got the book, and the list of incantations we made going through it.”
“Let’s go ask her.”
Laskenay agreed to the enchantment, and even suggested Kora stay in with her while the men went to meet with Galisan. She asked Kansten to stay as well, as an object upon which to cast spells.
“Oh no I won’t.”
“Kora has to cast them on someone.”
“Why not you?”
“I should be in a state to reverse them, in case she can’t. She won’t cast anything that could harm you, you have my word. Think of it as payment for enchanting your amulet.”
So that was why the apartment was suddenly secure enough for the amulet’s spell. Still wary, Kansten agreed. The princes set off with Ranler, and Laskenay put up a sound barrier in the main room. “First,” she said, to Kora, “I never talked to you about that fire spell in the warehouse. You could have killed me.”
Taken aback, Kora sputtered, “I’m so sorry! I’m sorry, it was the only thing I could think of and I knew I needed to free you and it….”
“It was the proper move,” Laskenay told her. “I told you to use magic as a last resort. There was nothing else you could have done, and the execution was perfect. Don’t be afraid of risks when you have to take them.” Kora nodded. Kansten, in the corner, looked put out that she had no idea what they were talking about. “Now, I want you to try the spell I used against Malzin. It’ll freeze you, Kansten, but you won’t feel a thing. Come more to the center of the room, please…. When you’re ready, lunge at Kora. She should remember the incantation.”
Kansten, who had dragged her feet from the corner, looked like she wanted to do anything but attack a sorceress. She ran straight for her fellow Leaguesman, who yelled, “Estatua!”
Something went wrong with the spell. Kansten keep moving; she was jerked back by her arm, which froze in midair as though held by an invisible shackle. Her feet slipped from beneath her, but the arm refused to budge, preventing her tumbling to the floor.
“Whoa!” she cried. “My elbow weighs a ton. Laskenay!”
“Desfazair,” muttered the sorceress, startled by the spell’s localization. Kansten’s arm dropped to her side, and Kansten herself fell to her knees. Kora stared, open-mouthed, while the test subject rubbed her elbow.
“I’ve never seen that spell used that way,” said Laskenay. Kora, as paralyzed as Kansten’s arm had been, felt her breath return as her victim rose.
“I didn’t mean to…. You should have frozen, every part of you.”
Laskenay admonished, “You took too long to focus. Know intuitively what you want, what you plan to do.”
“How do I do that?”
“Practice. It’s the only thing that can help. Kansten?”
Kansten glared at Kora. “You owe me,” she said, but lunged once more. This time both an arm and leg rooted her in place, with the result that she flailed about less. The third time she froze completely, just like Malzin, or like Wilhem on the scaffold. After that, Kora cast the spell flawlessly three times in a row. She could move on.
The rest of the morning was dull, though Kansten welcomed Kora and Laskenay’s poring over tomes, memorizing magic they could not practice, such as healing spells. Laskenay had a small collection of spellbooks, but a collection nonetheless: a book of attack and defensive magic, a second of stealth spells, a third filled with incantations to manage household chores, which Laskenay made Kora flip through, though Kora grumbled protest. “Remember the ambush?” Laskenay insisted. “The blood on my dress? What would I have done if I couldn’t make it vanish? I had to walk through the streets. These spells will prove more useful than you’re thinking.”
The lunch hour came and went. While they ate, Kora found one more piece of magic, a tripping spell she used against Kansten once they dragged out a mattress for her to fall on. Laskenay refused to let Kora cast a spell for temporary deafness, as there was no way to know what kind of pain might be involved.
When the session ended, Kansten was quick to toss her amulet on the table. All three women circled round while Laskenay muttered, “Amuleti de Vento.”
The stone of jade glowed a deeper shade of green, and continued to darken to a murky brown. Once the change in hue was complete, the amulet rose in the air and spun so quickly it became a blur; eventually the spinning stopped, the stone lowered itself to the table, and its color returned to normal.
Kansten put out a wary hand. When she touched the amulet and nothing happened, she was surer of herself and replaced it around her neck.
“That thing doesn’t leave the room until we learn what it does and how to control it,” said Laskenay. Kansten had no objection, and her first attempt to use the amulet proved successful, thanks to the Librette’s faded but legible instructions. Facing the table, she placed her hands in a V around the pendant and pulled it forward.
A steady vortex radiated from the stone. The swirling winds were as wide as Kora’s head and thrust the table and chairs against the wall with enough force to make them crumple like snapping trees.
Kansten dropped the amulet in a rush. It fell back against her chest, and the vortex with its dull roar evaporated as suddenly as it had formed. Kora put a hand to her mouth. Only Laskenay seemed to have expected such force; she muttered, “Table entero,” then “Chair entero,” and the fragments of wood that littered the room flew together to reform furniture. Kora and Kansten massaged their ears, which were ringing from the wind.
* * *
For the women, the next seven days flew by. What operations were ongoing in Yangerton Laskenay left to Menikas, devoting herself to Kora’s instruction. Spell after spell, incantation after incantation Kora learned; she ran them through her head in organized lists as she went to sleep, or else imagined another ambush and broke it apart moment by moment, predicting the moves of the guards, or of Zalski himself, and found she decided more and more quickly on a defensive strategy or definitive counterattack. Kansten continued to let Kora enchant her, not because she enjoyed the task, but because that way she could stick around while Kora learned incantations. Kora had suspected magic fascinated Kansten, suspected since she caugh
t her poring over the Librette the day they found it; now she knew how deep the attraction lay.
A week after reaching Yangerton, in the early afternoon, when Kansten had gone for provisions, Laskenay pulled out the Librette again. “I’ve lugged this once from here to Podrar and back,” she said. “I’m not doing that again, not in its current form.”
“We’ve tried to destroy it,” said Kora. “What else can we do?”
“When you found it, didn’t the book transform itself? There must be a way to renew the disguise. Let me think.”
“Do you know a cloaking spell?” Kora asked.
“One,” said Laskenay. “A simple one. It won’t be powerful enough.” As though to prove her assertion, she stared at the book and said, “Converti.”
With a puff of white smoke the Librette’s cover changed to a dull, faded beige, the same shade as when Kora first found it. Flipping through random pages, the women saw that each still contained Hansrelto’s work.
“We should cast the spell together,” Laskenay suggested.
“Would that make it more powerful?”
“The same incantation, the same vehicle to manifest it: I don’t know what it would do. But if simultaneous casting proves to increase spell strength….”
“It could help us more times than now.” The women locked their eyes on the book and repeated, “Converti.”
A second cloud of white smoke enveloped the Librette, this one thicker, more opaque. The fumes took longer to clear, but when they did, the page Kora stared at no longer had a spell to freeze blood in someone’s veins. Instead, it described an incantation to close an open wound.
Kora warned, “The Li…. The book, it’s still not safe like this. It’s not safe unless we destroy it. All it takes to undo the disguise is to name the thing. Is every spell reversible like that?”
Laskenay told Kora, “We’ve stumbled on a special case, I’d say. Hansrelto put a powerful charm on his book, one that affects how other spells react with it. There is an incantation to reverse most spells, one you already can cast: Desfazair. It undoes incantations that produce a lingering magical effect, like invisibility, or sound barriers.”
“So what couldn’t Desfazair undo?”
“It wouldn’t undo a fire set by magic. The fire-starter spell works in an instant, and then a chemical reaction, the fire it produces, continues on its own. You would have to cast a water spell.”
“So the healing spells I’ve learned, if I healed a wound….”
“If an incantation’s healed a man, the action’s finished. He’s been healed. You could harm him a second time, with or without magic, but not through the reversal spell. Now, the spell to enchant an amulet, the one I cast for Kansten, Desfazair could possibly counteract that if anyone thought to cast it. The magic of that spell lingers. It’s that magic that gives the amulet its power. Are you following?”
“What do you mean, it could possibly be undone?”
“Some spells, by their nature, prove more powerful than others. It would take more energy to strip Zalski of his powers than to light a pile of logs.”
“Different classes of magic.”
“Precisely. More powerful magic is more challenging to overturn. Some incantations, if you’re able to cast them at all, are so powerful they can’t be stopped by anyone. Half the spells we copied from Hansrelto’s book, you could put your whole being behind them and nothing would happen. You aren’t at the level they require. Nor am I. Sorcery in our day has weakened substantially from what it was.”
“But together….”
“Together we possibly might cast them. Trial and error’s the only way to test, and that can be exceedingly dangerous. There’s no way to foresee a spell’s exact effect.”
“Especially a spell you’ve never cast,” said Kora. “I guess that’s one reason people are terrified of sorcerers.”
“Oh, I wish we could destroy this book!”
They tried a vanishing spell together, and failed. “At least we’ve got it transformed back,” Kora tried to reassure her mentor. “That’s something, isn’t it?”
* * *
That evening, Kora lay in the room off to the left where she, Laskenay, and Kansten had been sleeping. Her body had come to understand that every night spent on a mattress, even without a bed, was a blessed event, a gift from the Giver, and pulled her out of consciousness before her mind made it through the first category of spells she had grouped together: escape spells. She drifted off into a waiting dream.
Kora stood in the ruins of a vast hall in the middle of the Pearl Mountains. The dream was vivid: she smelled the crispness in the air, even grew a little faint as her lungs adjusted to the altitude. A segment of the roof was open to the sky, and she saw the stars appear as she looked up, one by one, yet she felt warm. The air was thin, but something, somehow, blocked the mountain chill. The hall itself inspired the thought that nothing could be more pleasant than to clear a spot on the cracked, pebble-strewn floor of marble and read Neslan’s book of poetry by moonlight. Majesty hung in the open space, with its crumbling stone walls and rows of pillars to support what remained of the ceiling. In the distance, an owl hooted. Kora turned, to take in the ruin in its entirety, feeling peace in her solitude, a sense of belonging.
All that evaporated when a hand clamped down on her shoulder from behind.
“The Hall of Sorcery,” said a voice.
Kora set her eyes upon the strangest looking man she had ever seen. His hair, tied at the base of his neck, turned steadily from black to a glossy gray as it fell down his back. He was of average height, about fifty years old, with pockmarks spread across his face. He wore robes of the ancient style, such as Kora had imagined people wore in her made-up Trenzern. Her voice came weak, because of her shallow breath.
“Who are you?”
His yellowed eyes narrowed in disdain. “I haven’t waited years for that spell to summon a mere girl.”
“Who are you?” Kora repeated.
“Something went wrong. If you’re the Marked One….”
Kora’s dream was rapidly devolving into a nightmare. “I’m not….” she began, but the man spoke over her.
“I wish you weren’t, believe me. Now shut your mouth.” Kora took a step back. “There’s a piece of magical history you should hear, because you are the Marked One, may the Giver help us all.
“Centuries ago, an ancestor of mine had his fortune told. The results took him to these mountains. He found a chest that housed a magnificent chain, forged of red gold, and instructions to guard the jewelry for the Marked One of legend, for it would aid him in the quest to restore peace. Since greed was one of Hansrelto’s many vices, he tried to steal the chain but was unable by any magic to remove it from the chest, or the chest from its cave. Do you follow?”
“Hansrelto?” Kora took another reeling step away, but the robed storyteller seemed neither to notice nor to care. “Hansrelto of the Revolt? Of the Librette Oscure?”
“He was forced to leave the find. I imagine he planned to sell it after studying its magic, or to give it to his lifelong lover, the mother of his son. Not long after this, Hansrelto staged his rebellion with small success. He found himself, ironically, trapped in a cave not far from where he’d left the chain. His son was a child at the time of the battle and came to his father’s prison only once, when Hansrelto was on his deathbed.
“Hansrelto told him where to find the chain of red gold, in hopes that his bloodline, at least, might profit from the discovery. The young man knew enough about his father to hide the streak of a conscience he possessed, though he sensed the Giver’s presence in the find, and did as the parchment in the chest commanded. Personally, I imagine Hansrelto’s impure motives prevented him taking the chain himself. But that’s just speculation.”
Kora found herself as curious as she was confused. “Was something else written on the parchment?”
“A spell to summon the mind of the Marked One. A spell Hansrelto’s son cast mon
thly with no result, and his son’s sons down to me: no female has been born to our line for eighteen generations. I cast the spell this night.”
Kora’s breathing, which had stabilized, became labored again. “So this is real.”
“What did you think it was?”
“You have the chain.”
“And I won’t surrender it to an untried girl. If you want the thing you’ll take it by force.”
“Suppose I don’t want it?”
The sorcerer stepped forward, to counter Kora’s previous retreat. “I have only to cast the spell I cast tonight to summon you in a spirit state. You can use no magic as you are. I, however, am present in body. My magic has no restriction. In fact, the spell augments my power to enchant you, for your benefit or harm.”
Kora stammered, “You’re mad.”
“What I am is intent on seeing Zalski pay for blinding my brother and cutting out his tongue. What I am is tired of living sequestered in the mountains. You will come here for the chain.” He advanced as he spoke, and Kora moved away, matching his pace until he backed her against a column.
“Estatua!” she cried. “Kaiga!”
The second spell should have tripped the stranger, but neither proved effective. The sorcerer brought his face up to hers. “Thank you for proving my point,” he said. “Well, half of it. I expect to meet you in person before long. Now, to leave you with no doubt of my complete veracity: Braznom!”
Kora heard herself shrieking in pain from a distance. The ruined hall turned black; she woke, her skin clammy, tucked beneath her blankets in Yangerton. She clutched her left forearm, which stung and felt wet. Her cries woke Kansten and Laskenay, the last of whom rushed straight over. Kansten slid back the window’s ragged curtains before joining her fellows.
“My arm!”
Laskenay drew Kora’s hand aside, and all three gazed at the word “Petroc” carved shallowly in Kora’s flesh and shining with blood her fingers had partly smeared.
“That’s his name,” Kora whispered. Kansten gaped at the cuts. Laskenay muttered “Kura-la,” and the slices in Kora’s skin closed up. The pain went away, though scarlet still stained her forearm, a scarlet visible thanks to the streetlamp outside.
The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) Page 17
