The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) Read Free Page B

And then she followed him one Saturday when he left the house. He usually tells her where he’s going, and that time he didn’t, so that’s how she found the tree. He should’ve waited ‘til she’d gone to bed.”
    “ You should go to bed,” said Kora. “I don’t need to know anything else about Opal’s pop.” 
    Kora bid Zacry good night. Back in her room, the smallest of the house, she took a quill and inkbottle and sat on the floor. The moon gave her just enough light to see what she was doing. She wrote on top of the first page of shorthand, “The army almost found these. They were combing the bank. Act with caution.”
    She let the ink dry and stuffed the pages beneath her mattress, her mind racing. Why would Zalski’s army patrol south of the village, and what were they hoping to find? Had they been tipped that the Letter stashed its work there? How close was Zalski to shutting down the paper? The Letter was all Kora had, all anyone had, to know what truly was happening throughout the kingdom.
    She climbed into bed fully clothed, burning for answers, filled with dread of the coming month, when the paper’s next issue should come out. She prayed that the night’s adventure had satisfied her brother’s thirst for heroics, at the very least. Kora prayed to the Giver, Herezoth’s one and supreme deity also simply addressed as “God,” who in his justice took as well as gave and had seemed in a taking mood of late; whom the priests said used believers and non-believers alike as instruments of his benevolence and compassion, speaking to the human heart and inclining human will rather than directly interfering in the world he had created; who rewarded or punished in the afterlife according to one’s willingness to be an Instrument. She entreated him to grant Zacry the wisdom to keep from trouble, knowing all the while the only way her prayer would be answered would be for her to watch over and to teach him. But how could she? How could she when the government required children his age to spend nearly all day at school, and she had no choice but to pass what few hours he was home helping their mother sort thread, prepare and repair the loom, wash and fold cloth for sale at market? Soon she grew distracted, breaking off her prayer midstream as her mind tried to picture what could possibly become of her family. All the while, she never forgot the notes on which she lay.
    Kora knew she would not rest that night. For the life of her, she could not foresee Zacry learning to keep his head down. She could not foresee any future for him but one that ended all too soon, unless….
    Kora almost smiled from nostalgia to remember the legend of the Marked One. Her father first told her the story when she was eight, and it had not impressed her, because as gifted a storyteller as her father had been, this particular tale lacked any and all precision. In Herezoth’s darkest times, he said, when the kingdom was suffering worse than it ever had before or ever would, a hero would appear to save the kingdom’s future, with special instincts or powers from the Giver no one else in history had displayed.
    “What kind of suffering?” she asked, picturing a famine or a flood.
    People weren’t sure about that; there were disagreements. Most said the suffering would come as the result of black magic.
    “So who’s this hero supposed to be? A knight? A good sorcerer like Brenthor?”
    That last was a common guess, at least among those who held the black magic theory. All the legend itself said was that he would have some kind of mark on his face to identify him; thus, the hero was called the Marked One. Some held Brenthor himself had been the Marked One, with a distinctive mole above his lip hidden by a moustache.
    Kora had always deemed the legend too ridiculous even for a child to accept, though her best friend, a boy named Sedder, had been fascinated when she asked him if he knew of it and he said no. As for the hero, she