The Magic Council (The Herezoth Trilogy)

by Grefer, Victoria

  They mashed a plan together despite the friction, a plan as finalized as possible without knowing the mansion’s layout. When they finished, the king held Zacry and Bendelof behind.

  “How’s Kora?” Rexson asked, sitting in the desk chair. Bennie sat on the bed, while Zacry leaned against the wall. “Was her fourth a daughter? She thought it would be.”

  “It was. And so’s the fifth, who’s a year now. They’re named Laskenay and Tressa. Kora’s fine, Rexson. A little frustrated she couldn’t take part in this….”

  “I knew she would be.”

  “But Parker set her straight. He’s good for that. He’s sensible, takes things much more in stride than she does. His composure rubs off on her.”

  “Good,” said the king. “Good….”

  Bennie asked, “How’d she feel about Vane leaving? I don’t imagine she liked it.”

  Zacry said, “She understands he’s of age. Kora’s all right. What’s wrong with you two?”

  Rexson sighed, and changed the subject.

  “Bennie, I never intended to pull you into this. Now that Zacry and Vane are here, we can manage without you. The Giver knows you’ve done more for my family through the years than I have any right to ask.”

  “I took it on myself to get involved. And I’m sorry, again, for turning spy against your back. I would have talked a move that drastic over with you, but you were here, you had to be, and we were in Yangerton and…. Listen, Hayden told me I should do it. He said you’d approve the move, that there was no other way to find out where the boys might be. I hadn’t seen you in so long I thought the best thing to do was trust his judgment. I know I took a horrendous risk. I was so terrified the boys might suffer for it, I….” She swallowed. “I was sure I had enough information to make the charade a success. Hayden agreed with me.”

  “Bennie, I’m nothing but grateful for what you did. That said, from this point out….”

  The right half of Bennie’s face pulled up in a wry grin. “I’ve been through worse than this, Lanokas.” The king’s second middle name, which he had used as an alias with the Crimson League. “What if things go badly, hmm? What if Dorane ties up the sorcerers’ time, or takes them down, and the boys are magically sealed away? Who’d get them out? I’d have to, with my picks.

  “Look, I realize I don’t have a glamorous life. I wash dishes at an inn, and I’m in no way ashamed of that. It’s honest work. But I do have other skills you’ll need. You taught me to fight with a sword, you yourself, and I didn’t forget how. I keep a blade under my bed, in case someone from the old days who—well, who didn’t like us much—should track me down. Besides,” her eyes grew steely, “I know what it’s like to feel trapped and helpless. Man alive, I know what those boys are going through, and….”

  Bennie stopped as the king turned ashen. She squeezed her fist in self-accusation, and then rose to put a hand on Rexson’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to…. Lanokas, your sons are holding up. I know they are. You’re remembering what a mess I was after Kora rescued me and Zac from, well, from this very building, wasn’t it?”

  Her voice shook but she plowed on, recalling the day Zalski had taken her and Zacry captive: the boy to be a protégé, she a hostage. She had spent half a week as a prisoner in the Northeast Tower.

  “I was alone when Zalski first locked me up. I was alone, and your sons aren’t. They have each other. Then there’s the fact Zalski blinded me, which, well, didn’t settle my nerves any.” She shuddered, though a trip to the Miracle Pool in Partsvale had restored her sight years before. “They haven’t hurt your boys. Arbora promised they’re not hurt, didn’t she? There isn’t so much as a scratch on them, because they didn’t do something stupid when they came across Dorane.”

  The king buried his head in his arms on top the desk. Then he bolted up so quickly Bennie gave a small hop back. He slammed a hand on the back of the chair, nearly toppling it.

  “I’ve never hated anyone more than these bastards. By the Giver’s bloody harp, I didn’t hate Zalski this much. Zalski at least had the decency to come after me, after ME, which is what Dorane would have done if he had any sense of honor. Why, Bennie, why the hell did the blackguard…? Why would he go after my children? What the cad’s done to Gracia you have no idea. You can’t imagine how she’s changed. It makes me want to wring his neck, his scrawny neck to remember how she used to be. All we have left’s our daughter, six months old, and Gracia can’t even feed her. The woman’s so distraught, so completely destroyed, she can’t feed the babe. And the boys, my boys…. What are they guilty of? Of existing, that’s what. Of being born in this festering pit of a kingdom, and they’re not even to blame for that.”

  Rexson lamented, “I never should have married. From the moment Gracia told me she expected Valkin, I’ve feared this. I feared he might live what I lived all those years ago. Now he has, his brothers with him, the difference being I was twenty when Zalski struck. Valkin’s the oldest, and he’s half that. My God, I’ll kill that sorcerer son of a bitch, him and his accomplices. I don’t care if they’re women. If I had them here, I’d kill them in blood so cold they’d be screaming for a funeral pyre just to warm themselves.”

  A series of tremors shook Bennie’s bottom lip. Eyes glistening, she put Rexson back in his chair and gave his arm a supportive squeeze. “We’ll get them back,” she whispered. “Your boys, we’ll get them back.” She poured him a glass of milk, which he proceeded to knock to the floor.

  “Say we do,” he said. “Say we get them back. What’s to stop this happening again? What if my daughter were ten, or fifteen, and they abducted her for a month and raped her routinely while they held her?”

  Bennie was crying silently now. “You listen to me, no one’ll harm Melinda, not ever. You won’t let it happen, pure and simple, and these jokers won’t hurt her brothers. You taught the boys too well, I know you did. You taught them to be responsible, and that’s what’ll keep them safe until we rescue them. I know what they’ll have learned from you, because I know the kind of person you are. I hadn’t seen you in fourteen years, Lanokas. Fourteen years, and I came running to help when I heard you needed me. You made that much of an impression on my life.

  “How dare you be this unfair to yourself? I mean it, how dare you? Man alive, you’ll knock it off this instant, and you’ll drink this second milk I’m about to pour you, because you haven’t put a thing in your stomach all morning. I’ve been watching. You have to care for yourself, you really do. Those boys don’t want to come back after this much time to an ill father. Their mother’s ill already, and that’s enough.”

  All the while the king was yelling and then as Bennie tried to comfort him, Zacry kept his place against the wall, not stunned by the king’s ardor but unsure how to respond. He could not indulge his first instinct: to express some rough variety of empathy as a father himself. Now he said from where he stood, “Bennie’s right. Pull yourself together. You have to if the queen’s fallen to pieces. Your sons will be home tomorrow, and if we don’t make the guilty pay then, I swear I’m not leaving Herezoth ‘til those lunatics see justice. If I have to bring it to them myself, I will.”

  Zacry’s assurances calmed the king, or numbed him. Rexson squeezed Bennie’s hand and told the sorcerer, his voice dull, distracted, “I apologize for Gratton. He’s not a bad sort. He’s suspicious of magic, not of you. He has no problem with you. He worries spells might backfire, have unintended consequences…. It’s a legitimate concern.”

  The king went on, “He’s an excellent strategist, and a better swordsman than even my old teacher, who was an undisputed master. And he’s loyal. He’d just joined the army when Zalski had his coup, and he turned spy for us, though he was too young to advance to a useful post. We lost contact with him after the assault on our headquarters. Couldn’t waste time to track him down again. His oldest brother, ironically enough, was one of the Fontferry militia who came to our aid. He died when we took the Palace…. Did Kora ever mention the mi
litia?”

  Zacry claimed, “Kora told me everything.”

  The king, vaguely interested now, leaned an elbow on the desk. “Everything? Even about the chain?”

  The chain of red gold that had let Kora stalk Zalski from a distance, magically attending his meetings, hearing his thoughts. “Even about that. Rexson, why do you look surprised? Is there something I’m missing?”

  Rexson’s eyes had grown wider than was usual. He blinked to shrink them. “I don’t think you’re missing anything. If Kora told you she revealed the whole truth, then….”

  Zacry protested, “There’s something she never mentioned, isn’t there? Let’s have it. If she did leave something out….”

  “If she did, it’s not for me to speak.”

  “Rexson, I came to help you, and willingly. I’m not threatening to walk out if you keep me in the dark. But if Kora hid something, it’s because that something involves me. She told me how that chain worked, after all. She described how people died, people I knew. If she’s holding something back, then the secret’s about me, and I deserve to know what it is.”

  Chin in hand, the king considered Zacry’s argument, or tried to. His preoccupations lay elsewhere.

  “You won’t tell her I betrayed her?”

  “No matter what you say, I won’t confront her. You have my word.”

  “He should know,” said Bennie. “You know what Kora kept back, if she kept back anything. We both do, and it’s time he should know.”

  Zacry’s throat went dry. “So what happened? What did she do?”

  The king folded his arms and shifted his chair to face the sorcerer. “Do you remember when Vane’s mother took Kora to negotiate with Zalski?”

  A fog of insecurity descended upon Zacry. It was not a sensation he deemed familiar, and not one he knew how to combat. “That was after Kora saved me and Bennie from Zalski’s tower. Laskenay wanted to discuss Vane’s future.”

  “Laskenay went to discuss her son, that’s accurate. The complete truth is, Kora went to discuss you: to arrange your safety, amnesty until you came of age, because she was scared you might try to be heroic. Zalski didn’t make that bargain for nothing.”

  “What did she give him?”

  “Information: how she’d known where to find you. How she’d learned Zalski kept you in that tower room.”

  Zacry’s stomach tied itself in knots. “He demanded that in exchange for leaving Vane be.”

  “No,” said Rexson. “The condition was in exchange for your amnesty, and Kora took the deal. She told him about the necklace and its power.”

  “And she knew full well, full well, he’d torture the sanity out of her for invading his mind. Shit! Shit, she told me the deal was for Vane.”

  “Zacry….” began Bennie.

  “Shit,” Zacry said again. “I had no idea they discussed me that day, that she….” Zacry’s head began to spin. He dropped on the bed. “I wanted revenge after Zalski kidnapped me. I told Kora so, and I meant to have it. I’d have done something stupid and gotten myself killed. After leaving that tower, I meant every word I spoke against Zalski. My God…. My God, I didn’t mean to drive Kora to….”

  Bennie took a seat next to the sorcerer. “She didn’t tell you because she didn’t want you feeling guilty. You shouldn’t feel guilty. You were just a kid. You couldn’t have known how those rants of yours would scare her, and you had a right to rant, if you need me to remind you. Every right in the world.”

  The knots in Zacry’s stomach tightened, nearly making him double over. He had eaten nothing but an apple and a few bites of egg, and worried he might throw that up. “By the Giver’s broken lyre,” was all he could say. He shut his eyes. “Holy Giver, I cannot believe she did that. For me. I’d known she’d done it, but for me…. God only knows what that man would have done before he did away with her. She must have been terrified. It was only by a miracle she escaped him, that any of you did.”

  “She wasn’t terrified,” said Rexson. “Not during the final attack. She knew she’d done her duty by you, as the elder sibling. As an adult. You’re aware your sister confided in me in those days. Believe me, then, that you did just as much for her by going to a safehouse as she ever did for you.”

  “Buck up,” said Bennie. She nudged Zacry in the side. “Listen, kiddo, Kora was always proud of you, as she should have been. Besides, that’s long over and done with, thank the Giver.”

  So it was, Zacry told himself. Zalski was old news. They had other enemies now, but Zacry dwelt on the king’s revelations in a bubble of self-absorption while Bendelof brought the king that glass of milk she had promised.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Of Knights and Negotiations

  Ursa’s basement was a less dreary place by day. The high slivers of windows in the eastern wall allowed some sun to flood the room and heat the floor, so that the three boys sat on their blankets or overturned crates. While the basement was just as bare as it had been the night before, only a small part lay in shadow now, and what did not twinkled and winked as the light caught nooks and ridges in the stone. Also cheery was the smell of roasted chicken, on which the boys were lunching. It mingled with the scent of their stewed greens and the rose water August had used to wash.

  August was seventeen, younger than her sister by nearly eight years, and wore her blond curls short because at that length they extended nicely when she pulled at them. Grabbing her hair was her nervous habit, and she took comfort to feel the lightly hued springs give beneath her hand, stretching as she forced them down, then jumping back up. Her yellow sundress, lined with lace, seemed a work of art in the monotone gray that surrounded her, but it was nothing special really, not compared to the gowns the boys were accustomed to seeing at the Palace. Still, lace was a luxury in August’s fishing district. Ursa was the richest inhabitant for tens of miles if one forgot the Count of Carphead, and she made a point of taking care of her little sister. Her idea of showing what affection she felt for the girl was to make sure August’s dresses had nice trim.

  Holding an old, battered book, August sat on a crate in the center of the room. Hune had squeezed beside her and looked down at the page as she read. His plate, half-filled yet, lay in his lap. His brothers had gathered at August’s feet, Neslan still and attentive, Valkin fidgeting with the glasses that kept sliding down his nose. They had finished eating and had stacked their dishes next to them. The girl was reading, with great vivacity, a story about a silly knight and a troll.

  “And lo, the troll gave good Sir Adage a shock that night when he jumped out from behind a boulder on the lonely road. The knight’s horse spooked, Adage fell to the ground when the animal reared, and his armor gave a most fantastic clang as he hit the earth. The troll said, ‘Now shall I kill thee, good sir, because ever have I hated thy great justice.’

  “‘Ah!’ said the knight. ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and thou holdest nothing in thy hand at all! Nothing, whilst I may depend on my trusty sword, Lankon! Lankon mayeth not be hawk or eagle, but he claimeth some small valor.’

  “‘Aye,’ said the troll, ‘thou wieldest a blade, but I have friends here,’ and as poor Sir Adage used Lankon to prop himself up, four more trolls jumped out from behind the boulders on the hillcrest. Adage saw them by the moonlight.

  “‘A faithful friend is like gold,’ said the knight. ‘He who findeth one findeth a treasure. Thou art rich indeed, I see.’ And as Adage’s brave horse had bolted, Adage had no choice but to turn and flee from the trolls. Instead of pursuing him, the beasts rolled on the earth with laughter when he tripped upon his own two feet and flew sprawling to the thick green grass a second time.”

  Hune was laughing with genuine glee, a great belly laugh that shook him and would have shaken the crate he sat on, had August’s additional weight not held it firm. Neslan chuckled and Valkin smiled, although he said, “Adage is always a coward. He’s a coward when Mother reads about him too. Can we have something else?”

&nbs
p; “I know Mother reads us these stories,” said Neslan. “That’s why it’s nice to hear them again. Hush and let August finish.”

  August continued the tale.

  “‘What a shame to lose such a beautiful horse as old Trite,’ thought Sir Adage, growing angry once he placed a good distance between himself and the trolls. ‘There is nothing to be done, I suppose, except remember that beauty lyeth in the eye of the beholder, and since not everyone will find Trite as lovely as I did, the loss is not horribly great. Still, I hope his next owner thinketh him a graceful thing.’

  “But then, over a near hill, Adage spied old Trite grazing at his ease by the light of the moon, and he cried out, ‘Scoundrel! What a scoundrel thou art, and how glad I am to find thee! I am glad those horrid trolls did not catch thee and eat thee up!’”

  Hune was howling again with laughter and tumbled off the crate. His half-eaten piece of chicken hit the floor, and his greens landed all over his shirt. “Scoundrel!” he yelled at the makeshift stool that had held him in place no better than Trite had held old Adage. That was too much for the others; his brothers, August, they doubled over with shouts of mirth. Valkin let out such a guffaw that his glasses fell off his face. Just when everyone was calming down, Neslan started laughing again with a great snort that set them off once more.

  “That’s enough of that story for today, I think,” said August, when things settled down. “This is turning dangerous.”

  “Do trolls really exist?” asked Hune, cleaning himself up.

  “Of course they don’t,” said Valkin.

  “Maybe in the mountains,” said Neslan. “But not near home.”

  “Good,” said Hune. “I won’t go to the mountains then.”

  “You don’t want to meet trolls?” said Valkin. “It would be an adventure, to meet a troll. If there were any.”