The King's Sons (The Herezoth Trilogy) (39 page)

Hune
kept only one hound for himself, his Adage. The others would die, every one
that descended to meet the foe, but he had no choice. The staircase was clogged
with magicked men and women, perhaps with another sorcerer or two, though Hune
hoped his arrows had picked those off. Each second, more and more people were
entering from outside, were realizing the situation and rushing to the stairs.
Despite heavy losses, Linstrom’s army advanced.

One
woman flew up unassisted. From behind. Gratton saw her first, and he yelled to
Walten, who broke her skull flinging her hard against the wall. She slid to the
stone-floored foyer while Hune spotted red pupils on a woman at the foot of the
stairs. This one had dark hair in a bun and wore a man’s leggings and vest over
a cotton shirt. The clothing betrayed impressive muscle mass, and a sword swung
at her side. She pushed her fellows out the way, to move faster to where she
could do damage.

The
prince launched an arrow at her, then threw himself down as she vanished the
projectile and flung a ball of fire at him. It almost hit Gratton, but he spun
from out its path, and it struck the wooden wall behind him with an explosion
of heat and energy that launched the soldier and three other men in uniform,
along with Wilhem Cason, through the carved oaken banister. Vane’s protective
magic kept the manor from lighting, but Hune’s skin seared where he lay at the
top of the stairs. He reached for his quiver while Walten used
Mudar
to stop his brother’s fall.

The
saving gesture left Walten an open target to the red-eyed sorceress. She
launched another fireball, this one blue, at Kansten’s brother’s chest. Hune
watched in horror; he couldn’t take the hit to save the more valuable man. He
was sprawled on the landing, prone….

Hune’s
dogs were barking madly now, and people were screaming, jostling, jamming up
the staircase as the animals mauled the first assailants they could hold between
their jaws. The entire wooden structure threatened to collapse beneath them.

Adage,
white with brown spots and a gray muzzle, had come to favor the young sorcerers.
He stood, hackles raised, beside the prince, but at Hune’s command the dog
leapt in front of Walten and took the blue fireball between his ribs. He did
not catch flame; he did not seem to suffer. One second Hune saw him, jumping, a
determined-sounding bark issuing from his throat, and the next he was gone, a
pile of ash floating to the landing.

Thanks
to Adage’s sacrifice Walten saved his brother, but Hune was fighting tears to
think of his dog. Of Gratton, who had broken a leg when he hit the floor. Hune
tried to protect him and struck one or two enemies, but Gratton was helpless
and surrounded by Linstrom’s men. As Walten and Wilhem rained down spells upon
that horrible, red-eyed sorceress who blocked them and blocked them again, Hune
could only watch as a man stabbed Gratton through the heart and started his
climb. At least the lifelong soldier died quickly, Hune told himself, and
avenged him with an arrow.

Gratton
was with Bennie again, after ten long years apart.

Finally,
one of Wilhem’s spells struck. The incantation was one that girl Rexy had
taught him, to stop a moving object. Hune had watched him practice it on Vane’s
children’s balls, on a glass once when it slipped from Rexy’s hand. He used the
spell now to stop the sorceress’s heart. She collapsed; her allies trampled her
as they both rushed up from behind and backed away from the onslaught of the
dogs. Two hounds were still alive, and the noise they made, coupled with the
screams of Linstrom’s men, was incredible.

Walten
threw himself flat beside Hune. “We’ve got to go,” he said. “They’ll trap us.
We’ll go to the library, come on!”

The
general had soldiers blocking the door through which Linstrom’s men had
entered. None of the invaders crowding the stairs would escape the way they’d
come in.

Wilhem
transported to the library with the soldiers left on the landing, leaving
Walten to follow with Hune. The prince blocked his ears to the howls of his
last dogs as they cried out. He wasn’t sure how they met their ends, only that
he was glad not to know the details.

Good boys. You’re good
boys….

“Hune,
this staircase is wooden. I can cut it.”

“Send
them all falling?”

“Most
will be too injured to resist the soldiers outside that door. Should I sever
the stairs?”

Hune
gulped. “You’re asking me…?”

“You’re
the prince! Tell me, do I cut it?”

They
could save numerous soldiers that way. They might save Jane Trand and Rexy, who
were with that contingent guarding the exit. So many of Linstrom’s supporters
were still rearing to attack….

“Cut
it.”

The
prince and the sorcerer were three floors up, but each second brought
Linstrom’s troops closer now that the dogs were dead. Walten cried, “
Sebera-tod
,” and the staircase broke
four steps down from their landing. Hune watched the structure teeter before it
toppled and struck the wall. He heard the screams of panic, the groans of
pain….

Then
Walten grabbed Hune’s arm and cast another spell, a transport spell, and all
that disappeared.

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

Battle at the Library

Oakdowns’s
library was across the hall from the garden door, one of the entrances
Linstrom’s troops were sure to utilize. It was also a large, open space, or
made into one when the general decided he’d corral the battle there. Hune left
his bow on the servants’ stairs, knowing it would be of little use in tight
quarters, and drew his sword as soon as Walten transported him to the other
site of carnage.

The
library was utter chaos. Hune saw blood and bodies everywhere, including
spatters on the bookshelves. Dueling soldiers and assailants filled the room.
The general had set the twin sorcerers—Jane Trand’s students—to
pick off the last of the enemy who entered from the garden, which left Zacry
and Lottie assigned to the library itself. The sorcerers held their own, but
Lottie’s conspirators weren’t happy to find her shooting spells against them.
Zacry had his hands full trying to protect her; he noticed nothing when Hune
and Walten appeared.

Wilhem
was already helping his uncle. They fended off a sorcerer determined to get to
Lottie through them, and had the upper hand as Linstrom’s man appeared
nonplussed about something. He spoke words Hune recognized as a spell, but they
had no effect. The prince smiled: must be one of the confounders. Bless Jane
Trand! Zacry slew the confused foe without hesitation.

Lottie
was firing spells in rapid succession, keeping three former allies at bay. That
was all Hune had time to register. Walten ran to help the sorceress, and Hune,
after that, barely dodged a strike from a long, sharpened staff. The force of
the intended blow sent a rush of air past him strong enough to unset his
balance.

The
man who attacked had pupils redder than his bound, copper-colored hair: another
sorcerer, one from Lottie’s band. Hune was in trouble. He gripped his sword,
prepared to do what damage he could….

A
hand from behind, on Hune’s shoulder, pushed him down as a firm voice yelled, “
Abra Pechum
!”
The staff-wielding sorcerer screamed as his chest split open in
the form of a dripping, spraying X. He swayed and collapsed, dead.

Hune
peered over his shoulder and saw no one. Then the same voice to cast the spell,
a familiar voice, muttered, “
Desfazair
,”
and Vane appeared. He looked haggard, covered in browning blood and perhaps
more things Hune didn’t want to identify. “Stay with me,” the duke instructed.
“Stay with me, do you hear? Where’s Gratton? Kora said he’d be….”

“Gratton’s
with his wife,” said Hune.

Thad
Greller came trotting up, his sword at the ready. From the corner of his eye,
the prince saw a raven-haired woman wearing a bandana station herself near
Lottie, casting spells along with Walten.

* * *

Vane
quailed to think what might have happened had he arrived at the library a
minute later. Hune’s father was already dead; to think of losing Rexson’s son
as well…. The prince had no idea of what had passed at the stables, couldn’t
possibly. Vane would have to tell him.

But
not now. Now was no moment for that. As Hune scrambled to his feet, reclaimed
his sword, Vane scanned the room for any sign of a sorcerer. This was the last
battle site, if the prince and Kora’s sons had moved here from the servants’
stairs. Kill Linstrom’s sorcerers, and what remained of his forces would
surrender.

Near
Vane’s bookshelves, a tall, gangly woman with a half-fallen bun of blonde hair
made a guardsman keel over with a word. Vane slew her in kind. At his side, two
swordsmen clashed weapons with Thad and Hune, so Vane tripped them both,
allowing his fellow nobles to make short work of them. With Kora’s help, Lottie
had cut her attackers down, and the combination of Zacry and his nephews proved
too much for their scarlet-eyed foe. Linstrom’s sorcerers were dropping by the
minute, but the losses only hardened their weaker companions.

That
was not to say those companions had no magic, or failed to utilize it. Vane
recognized two sisters in the melee, not yet middle-aged but neither young. He
had seen them years before, at interviews for the Magic Council; they were
telekinetic, like the king. They had been far too frivolous, or so they’d
presented themselves, to deserve the appointment they sought, and apparently
had not taken well to rejection. Vane made to bind them, but before he shot off
his purple cords they saw him, saw Thad and the prince each settled in a duel
nearby. With a wave of their hands they ripped Thad’s sword from his grasp and
sent it flying at Vane’s chest. The duke barely had time to evoke his ice blue
shield, but the blade careened into a barrier of magic energy.

Thad
was not so lucky, now unarmed and facing a burly opponent. The man sliced him
across the bicep before the noble remembered his magic and vanished his
attacker’s sword. Then Thad smacked him hard across the jaw with his good arm.
Linstrom’s soldier went down, and when his sword popped back to existence it
fell on top of him, lodging in his stomach.

The
slice on Thad’s arm, his sword arm, was damaging. Blood was gushing from it,
and he’d dropped his recovered weapon to collapse, trying to hold the wound
closed until Vane could get to him. Vane felt sick to see Thad’s face drain of
color, and his magic, a multitude of spells, left a seam in the form of a long,
depressed scar where blood pooled.

“Aren’t
you the artist,” Thad said. His voice was weak, but his jovial tone took away
Vane’s fear. “I suppose I should tell Carlina it represents how deep our love
runs.”

Vane
prevented him standing with a firm hold on his shoulders. “Your wife won’t care
about a scar,” he said. “Stay put! You’ll swoon from blood loss if you move….
Hune
!”

Hune’s
opponent had knocked his sword away, out of hand. The prince dodged the man,
and Vane broke his attacker’s neck as he had so many necks that night, and
opened human chests. So many others. So much death.

Rexson.

As
Rexson’s son rearmed himself, four battered soldiers, with the help of Vane’s
Mudar
spell to strip the telekinetic
sisters of their blades, worked together to add two to the corpse count. Then
Vane saw Lottie battling that sorceress Agatha from the Hall, the one who had
wanted to torture Francie further. Zacry was down, but his nephews were tending
to him; he was alive, was trying to sit up, so Vane turned his attention to
Agatha.

Her
befuddlement magic was of small use at Oakdowns, but she had no problem
wreaking havoc of a more direct nature. The rust-haired beauty had death in her
eyes, and the spells she sent at Lottie had hit at least two of Oakdowns’s
defenders. The soldiers writhed in agony, bleeding from Vane knew not where:
from every part of their bodies, by the look of things. He couldn’t heal them
without knowing what their injuries were.

“You
bitch!” screamed Agatha. The collateral damage she’d caused meant nothing to
her. “You betraying whore!”

Another
of Agatha’s spells, a great black jet, went awry as Lottie deflected it. Vane
vanished the thing before it struck a man in uniform. Lottie was on the
defensive, and didn’t look as though she could hold out for long despite her
glowing, reddened eyes. She’d notched her sword, and her lavender-hued shield,
wrought of magic, was fading in places. She summoned the energy to renew it,
but unnecessarily; Vane used
Mudar
to
send Agatha’s next black jet back at its source. The woman’s own spell struck
her in the chest.

Agatha
screamed as her skin turned black and flaked away. The curse spread outward to
her arms, her legs, her rouged cheeks. As though the spell burned her alive, a
fair number of her bones were visible before they clattered against the floor.
Bile rising in his throat, Vane ran to heal Agatha’s first bloodied victims, or
to try, but the men were already dead. Examining them, he still couldn’t say
what the woman’s spells had done.

The
battle continued. As Vane changed his role to support and healing, Hune always
in his sight, the library doors flew open and General Bruan marched in with
Hayden Grissner, the dark-skinned sorcerer brothers Jane Trand had taught, and
Trand herself, with the bony Rexy girl and a slew of uniforms at their backs.

That meant much good. For one, every sorcerer to the king’s
name had survived at least this long. A breathing Hayden would console Kora,
would prove she was not the only member of the Crimson League left standing;
that would be a lonely burden, Vane supposed, and not one he wished upon Kora
when she was still so young. It also meant the soldiers and sorcerers left to
guard the servants’ door from the exterior had decimated Linstrom’s men there,
though by the number of gray uniforms behind the general, Oakdowns’s defenders
had suffered heavy losses.

Unfortunately, Linstrom’s troops didn’t balk when Ingleton’s
reinforcements arrived. None of them savored the thought of prison, a trial,
and a hanging. They preferred to die here, and they forced the sorcerers and the
general’s troops to kill them to the last man. A number turned their weapons on
themselves. With Thad too weak to defend himself, Vane and Hune stood guard by
him through the last of the carnage.

Only when the battle was over, definitively won, and the rest
of the sorcerers were healing wounded soldiers did Vane catch a good glimpse of
his mentor, the man who for years had housed, taught, and prepared him to take
up his father’s title.

“Zac!”

Zacry Porteg glanced up from where he knelt by
an inert guardsman. He raised a hand to the right side of his face, where a
ropy scar—one to rival the general’s—cut through a gruesome
bloodstain to mar his countenance. It ran from his temple down his neck,
branching off to disfigure his nose.

“Zacry, what…?”

“Nasty spell split my face wide open. Saved my life, that
Lottie did. Healed me before I lost enough blood to feel woozy. The shock of it
took me out of the battle for a bit, but….”

Vane nodded. He willed his stomach not to churn, but his
horror must have shown in his expression, because Zacry asked, “How bad is it?
Will it frighten my children?”

“It might, for a while. They’ll realize soon enough you’re
still the same old you. So will Joslyn. She’s already accustomed to being the
better looking.” Vane was glad to see Zacry crack a smile. “It could be worse,
you know. Much worse. You could have lost an eye, lost your life.”

Vane paused. He swept the room with a glance; the place was
crowded, overflowing with people stumbling among the dead and wounded. The
prince was with Thad, helping him stand, probably meaning to move him to a
bedroom.

The Duke of Ingleton knelt by his mentor and lowered his
voice. “Rexson’s dead, Zac.” Zacry’s face contorted, giving him an even more
gruesome appearance. “I was occupied. Kora couldn’t save him. She said he died
saving her, took an arrow…. I have to tell Hune before he hears from someone
else. Come with me?”

The elder sorcerer nodded his assent. Vane chided, “You can
at least remove the blood,” and cast a vanishing spell. The stains disappeared
from Zacry’s face, leaving just the scar, which looked far less sickening on
its own.

As the two men stood to follow Hune, Kora rushed up, still
under the effects of Vane’s alteration spell. Hayden Grissner was with
her—the former Leaguesman would have recognized her by that
bandana—and he did a double take to look at Zacry. Kora just seemed
grateful her brother was alive. The eyes that were and weren’t hers had tears
in them, and she fell upon Zacry in a wild embrace, for what Vane imagined was
not the first time since the battle’s end.

“We’re off to talk to Hune,” Zacry told her. “You’ll be all
right?”

“Give the prince my blessings. And tell him I’m sorry I
couldn’t do anything for….”

Zacry patted her back. He said, “No one blames you,” and passed
her off to Hayden, the blond and soft-spoken “peasant duke.”

* * *

Zacry and Vane’s somber expressions frightened Hune. Their
silence as they settled Thad, weak from blood loss, in a guestroom bed made the
prince’s entire body tense up. When Thad no longer needed their attention, but
lay with open, dulled eyes, watching, Hune could hold his tongue no longer.

“What’s happened? Where’s the king, Vane? Why haven’t I seen
him?”

Vane swallowed before he spoke. “Your Highness, you should
know….”

“Where’s my father, Ingleton?”

“He’s dead, Hune.”

To suspect was one thing. To hear the words from one of the
men Hune trusted most, hear the ache in Vane’s voice as he pronounced them, was
something else entirely. Hune’s vision blurred as he stumbled to a chair against
the wall. The sorcerers followed.

While Vane explained the tragedy, Hune’s eyes began to
sting. He listened, stunned, aching. Remembering.

“It hasn’t been easy for
you, living in your brothers’ shadows. You do know you mean no less to me than
they? That I’m no less proud to call you my son?
”

Hune looked at the floor, hoping that might clear his
burning eyes. Good Giver, they seared.