The Magic Council (The Herezoth Trilogy)

by Grefer, Victoria

  Ursa remained impassive. “Maybe we can ask Porteg what he’s doin’ here before him and his cronies do us in. We should have time between ‘em showin’ up and the end of everything.

  “By the way,” she added, “where’d my sister skedaddle off to?”

  Dorane said, “She didn’t skedaddle anywhere. The boy took her away with the hostages.”

  With that, Ursa’s stoicism broke. She jumped up, slamming a fist on the tabletop, making it shake. She threw her rag. Arbora winced as Ursa’s chair toppled over, scratching the floor.

  “The boy? Zalski’s nephew? If he thinks he can be snatchin’ my sister….”

  “Calm yourself,” said Arbora, taking strength from Ursa’s rage. “We can’t exact vengeance. We’ll be lucky to escape from this alive.”

  “He can’t. Be takin’. August. It ain’t fair play.”

  “He rescued August, all right? He rescued her from Dorane.” Arbora knew she shouldn’t speak, that she would only cause dissention, but the truth would out one way or another. Truth had a way of doing that. Better to admit everything now, fix the damage, and move on. “Dorane was smothering her.”

  Ursa froze. Her face twisted in pain and anger. She swelled, anyone would have thought because of outrage, but it was more that she felt her heart deflate; she sucked in air to fill the gap that had appeared in her chest. She cried, “He did what?”

  “You attacked August yourself,” the sorceress reminded her. “Or you tried to.”

  “She was attackin’ Dorane, so I tried to help him. I wasn’t tryin’ to kill no one. Dorane, how could you? My sister?”

  “I snapped,” said the sorcerer. “I snapped, all right? She stopped me casting spells. She interfered, and I panicked. I could see the hostages would get away, and without the princes we have nothing. Look, I’m glad she got away. I hope I scared her senseless, but I’m glad she got away. Killing her would have been pointless.”

  Ursa looked as though her limp and lifeless heart had been ripped out. “Are you sayin’ that if killin’ August could have gotten us the council, you’d have done it an’ not felt bad? Is that what you’re sayin’?”

  “We all need to sacrifice something. If that something’s the girl, well….”

  Ursa did not care he was a sorcerer. She slapped him across the jaw. “Damn you!” she shouted, her cheeks and ears scarlet. “Damn you! You won’t touch my sister, not for nothin.’ Not for no damn political power, you hear me? Hell, Dorane, I wouldn’t hurt your boy, and you wouldn’t neither, not him. You’d give up on the council ‘fore you did that. We don’t. Hurt. Our own. My sister? You’re a piece of shit, you are! August probably thinks I’d rip her eyes out on sight, thanks to you!”

  “Stop it,” Arbora demanded. “Both of you, just stop. Your ineptitude drew me into this. My life’s in danger thanks to you oafs, and I won’t have you endanger me further by bickering about things we can’t do a thing about. No one’s going to hurt August. But I think…. Yes, I think we just might be able to use her absence to our advantage.”

  “And how’s that?” asked Ursa.

  Arbora lowered her voice. “Would you be opposed, Ursa, to putting her in another situation like the one you put her in with your bear?”

  Ursa shook her head in grief. “My poor old bear….”

  “A situation where’s she theoretically in danger, but really isn’t, because it’s a danger she’ll avoid instinctually?”

  Ursa rubbed her chin. “That depends, I think. If I had to. I mean….”

  “Then listen….”

  * * *

  The scene Vane interrupted when he entered the king’s antechamber was so striking in its beauty, so picturesque, that he regretted being present to bring it to an end, even though Rexson had sent for him. The king and the boys had gathered around the writing desk, where Queen Gracia sat with a cooing Melinda on her lap. The six-month-old reached out for Valkin: more specifically, for his eyeglasses, which he held to his face while gently breaking his sister’s grip on them.

  “She got bigger,” said Neslan.

  Rexson was the only one to glance at the intruder. He beckoned Vane forward.

  “I’ll be the one to watch out for her,” Hune told his brothers. “You’ll have other things to worry about. You’ll be a king and an ambassador. I won’t, ‘cause I’m the youngest, so I’ll take care of Melly. I’ll be her favorite brother.”

  “You will not!” protested Neslan. The king tousled his son’s hair before directing Vane aside. The two men might as well have been alone in the room for all the mind its other occupants gave them.

  Rexson said, “I figured it’s time to discuss your inheritance.”

  “What inheritance?”

  “Your father’s title and wealth.”

  Vane blinked. “Didn’t Zalski steal his possessions? His money?”

  “Your uncle confiscated what Laskenay couldn’t carry off, but he never squandered the smallest part of it. He was saving it for when you came of age and he could act as your executor. He always hoped you would join him one day.”

  “He’d have wanted that,” Vane conceded. He shivered.

  Thank God my mother hid me. If I meet her when I die, that’ll be the first thing I do, is thank her.

  The king continued, “The material things are the less contentious matter. We’ll go through them later if you wish. More delicate’s the fact that the title of duke, with all its privileges, is yours by birthright: your father’s as well as grandfather’s.”

  Vane gulped. “Zalski’s title. The one he should have had.”

  “That’s right. To be frank, I would leave that duchy be. I’ve been administrating it for years, and would gladly continue to do so. Your grandfather was a good man, Vane, and you know in what esteem I held his daughter. I don’t imply that you are or should be ashamed of them in the slightest, but the fact remains, the title of Lanceton is inextricably linked with Zalski, and you’d do better to distance yourself from him in any way you can. Even putting your uncle aside, two duchies would be too much for anyone to manage without experience. Concentrate on Ingleton. That’s my advice, if you decide to return to Podrar.”

  Ingleton. His father’s duchy. “That does make sense, Your Majesty.”

  “I could not, and will not, deny you assuming your place at court, should you wish to take it up. There isn’t a noble alive who would dare call me to act against you. Your parents were too beloved, and I refuse to snub your father by taking his legacy from his son. The choice is yours, then. Think on it. I’ll support you in whatever you decide. Don’t let a sense of duty, or familial obligation, pull you to become a public figure if you’d rather do otherwise. Neither Laskenay nor Valkin would desire that.”

  Vane said, “People would discover my secret, wouldn’t they?”

  “They’d have to.”

  “By the title. They’d know my family line, know I’m a sorcerer.”

  “As far as the nobility, I just told you the vast majority respected your parents. They understand that Laskenay never supported her brother, and that your father, had he lived, would have opposed the new regime. They’ll accept you with open arms for your parents’ sake. The handful who would think you presumptuous or dangerous—I know precisely who they are—can do you no real harm. They’d do nothing more than talk and turn their backs to you. They aren’t worth worrying about. They’re certainly not worth bending to. Don’t forsake what’s rightfully yours on their account. If you have other reasons, personal reasons, for continuing as you are, that’s a different matter.

  “I realize,” said the king, “that I seem a bit of a hypocrite right now. If I’ve let dissentious groups prevent me, in the past, from reaching out to the magicked more openly, it’s because those groups had it in their power to stir up violence. There lies the distinction. The dukes and earls who would object to you are nothing but loquacious fools drunk with their own wealth, who speak because their money gives them no influence of the type they would
need to be an honest threat to you, not as long as you can boast my goodwill.”

  “They could hire someone to kill me.”

  “That’s beneath their dignity, most especially Carson Amison’s.” Vane knew the name: the Duke of Yangerton. “He would be a foe, your greatest. Listen, no hired assassin would take a chance against a sorcerer.”

  “I see,” said Vane.

  “There’s no reason to rush a decision.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Good. I also wanted to tell you that I intend to seek out Dorane, and won’t require your aid.”

  “Your Majesty….”

  “He and his stooges will be more dangerous now, like cornered animals, and I won’t have you risk yourself again, not to satisfy my thirst for vengeance. Those three would kill you out of spite. You, you personally, crushed their leverage when you saved the boys. Your mother would curse me to kingdom come if I allowed you to plow on, and I’ve enough people to avenge as it stands without adding you to the number.”

  “Your Majesty, I want to go after the kidnappers. After Dorane. I saw what he tried to do to August, and he deserves to hang for it.”

  “He will, Vane.”

  “But I want to be the one to catch him, I….” Vane sighed. “I promised Kora I’d follow your orders. Yours and Zacry’s. Are you ordering me not to take part in this?”

  “I am.”

  “Then I’ll obey.”

  The king clapped him on the shoulder. “If you want to do something for August, you can stay at the Palace and help her adjust to Podrar. Let her talk through some ideas for a long-term plan about where she can go, how she can make a living. She feels a bit groundless at the moment.” The king smiled. “And she now understands you’re not a spy, which is a step in the right direction. Maybe she’ll open up to you. I’m curious, what do you think of the girl?”

  Vane’s shoulders tensed. “She looked out for your boys. It’s only right that someone should look out for her.”

  The king smiled again. “You’re dodging me,” he said. “Just like your mother used to do, constantly. It serves me right for asking a direct question. Well, speaking of your mother…. Wait here a moment.” Rexson went over to the desk. He opened the bottom drawer and returned with something Vane could not quite see due to how the king held it and a leather-bound journal, a small one, its cover water-spotted. The parchment pages had yellowed, at least around the edges.

  The king explained, “When the Crimson League retook the Palace, I sent two or three people to the last place we’d camped, to recover what we left there. This journal was among your mother’s things. I haven’t read it myself, not a word beyond the first few sentences, to establish what it was. I didn’t feel I should. You, however, have the right. The right to keep it, if nothing else. You’ve precious little that belonged to your parents.”

  Vane took the journal gingerly, almost afraid to touch it, not out of reservation but because it looked as though it might fall apart at any handling. “Thank you,” he said. “Sincerely.”

  “I don’t know what she wrote about me, if anything. Don’t judge me too harshly.”

  Then the king handed over a silver quill molded in the shape of a feather. It sparkled as though he had recently cleaned it of varnish. The nib was missing, but that would be easy to rectify.

  “This was your father’s,” Rexson said. “He used it constantly. He told me once it was a wedding gift from his father. The ceremony’s date’s engraved on it.” So it was, at the widest point. “Zalski overlooked the date’s significance, or he would have destroyed the heirloom. He wouldn’t have wished you sentimental about your parents, your father especially.”

  Vane nodded, and Rexson said, “We’ll root through the rest of your inheritance some other time, you have my word. But I thought you should have something now.”

  “Thank you,” Vane repeated.

  He went back to his room. He lit the wall lamp and the candle he had left on the bed frame, carrying the latter to the desk, where he examined the quill and traced his finger along its edge. He tried to imagine his father using it and pictured a man who looked more or less like he did, with slightly smaller eyes, a thick, elegant moustache, and a well-trimmed beard. That, at least, was how the king had once described the original Valkin. Rexson was the only person Vane knew who had known his father. No, that was not quite true. The queen must have known him, but she’d never mentioned him.

  Next, Vane turned to the journal. He had light enough to read, though only just, and as he turned the front cover, slowly, with both hands, he could make out his mother’s pointed, slanted script, the same writing as in the letter Teena had given him years ago. Then he closed the book, eased it to its back, and opened it in the same cautious manner as before to the final entry:

  Two days remain before the assault on the Crystal Palace. Two short days. If someone had told me in the past I would meet my end attacking the king’s domicile, I would have mocked him. But then, it is not the king who resides there now, but Zalski, with her. The Giver pardon me, I abhor that woman. Every fiber of my being detests the mere thought of her, her besmirching those walls….

  I mustn’t distract myself. Two days is not much time, and I have to decide, I must decide. My thoughts were clear before Zalski could lay waste our minds, could rape our memories. Now, should he take any of us alive—and that’s a certainty, he’s sure to capture at least one—everything I’ve done will be for naught. My mind, Kora’s, Rexson’s, it matters not whose, they’ll all turn against us when Zalski casts the spell now in his clutches. My brother will find my son, before the boy is old enough to strip himself of magic. I couldn’t bring myself to bind the boy’s powers that night at Wheatfield, and I was right not to attempt it then. But now, now that very act may be the only way to spare him, and in spite of everything….

  No. No, I mustn’t commit such an atrocity. I cannot have him grow to loathe me because I deprived him of his magic. He’d curse my memory; that much has not changed. Should Zalski steal him from Teena at the tender age of three, should he raise him at the Palace, I can do nothing but pray that my principles and his father’s are a part of him, a component of his blood my brother will find himself powerless to counteract. I believe it’s so. Perhaps I delude myself, but I feel it in my heart. It ran through every pulse as I held my son that torturously brief night. In the same way, I doubt not that I myself will not survive—but Bennie will, somehow. Surely that cannot be fancy? Surely, were I imagining to be fact what I merely desired, I would convince myself that I too might escape? I don’t regret telling Bennie where I hid Zacry. Kora herself is ignorant of where her brother hides. She wishes not to know, for his protection. But that is precisely why Bendelof must: somebody must in addition to me, despite the risks.

  Kora assured me that, should our campaign fail, my boy, my Valkin, at Zalski’s school of magic would have Zacry to protect him. To set him an example. And she was right, so even should Zalski corrupt my son beforehand—the Giver forbid it!—Valkin will meet Zacry, eventually. Their paths would have to cross, and there would always be the chance Zacry’s influence would set him right. I cannot know what will pass, but still I’m certain that, for better or worse, I could not have summoned the mettle to erase Valkin’s powers two weeks ago had Zalski appeared to rip the child from my arms, and I cannot do so now. I must try to believe that his father and I will live on in him.

  I do believe, with all my soul, that my son and his father share more than a name. I remember watching, on the morning of his death, the father hold the infant as though he were flying, and the boy, how he laughed heartily, never doubting the strong arms would prevent a fall. Moments like that leave a mark, I’m sure of it, a mark like a scar to change one permanently, even when the act lies long forgotten. I myself have done, if not the absolute best for my son, the best that lay within my faculties and resources. And he’ll know that. He will know that, from the woman who cares for him, and I feel a peace descending
like a mist now, the peace I have been seeking for three years. And yet, I remember that morning, the morning of the coup, my family perfect, joyful, and I cannot help but wonder at all that came to pass. I marvel at the sheer improbability. Could I have stopped my brother? I used to think so. Now I doubt I could have done a thing differently.

  A full page remained, but Vane stopped reading. He could go no further. He could not make out the words; his vision had turn blurry as a watery film built up before his eyes.

  Vane’s mother, in her one letter to him, the letter she had written that night she rocked him to sleep in a barn two weeks before her death, had not let herself express emotion. She never let on she had considered binding his powers, though she gave him the incantation, in case he chose to cast it on himself. She wanted Vane to have that option, because he could throw his magic-manic uncle off his back no other way. Laskenay promised Zalski’s word bound him to leave Vane be if the boy proved incapable of sorcery. She assured that—Vane had read the words so often he had them memorized—“Your father loved you immensely. Only his death could have torn him from you, and I deserted you because I judged it to be the only way you could have a normal childhood. It was not out of selfishness or want of feeling. You could not have been secure in my care.” That was the extent of the letter’s sentimentality. There was no plea for forgiveness, or for remembrance, no advice or exhortation, no blessing of any kind. She had resisted the temptation to bear her soul to her son, or had found herself incapable of such an act. It was to this journal she had emptied herself.

  Vane had known the name he went by was not the one his parents gave him. It made sense for his Aunt Teena to call him something else; the whole point of her raising him had been to maintain some level of secrecy as to his whereabouts. Still, he had never set great store on sharing his father’s name, and to read his mother’s thoughts on the subject was painful, and consoling, and eye-opening all at the same time. Laskenay foresaw her own death, and Bendelof’s survival, and even Vane’s close relationship to Zacry Porteg, though under different circumstances. In truth, Vane considered Zacry an older brother. Could Laskenay also have been right, then, in what she said about the connection between Vane and his father? Had Vane’s parents, in less than a year of caring for him, marked his soul in such a way that their presence lingered in his life even now? Was it that presence that kept the black spot on his heart from expanding?