The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) Read Online Free

could not imagine a concept as fantastically mundane as the “Marked One.” She always pictured a noble knight in white or perhaps gold armor on a shining steed, with a sword in his hand and a birthmark, perhaps the sorcerer’s mark, on his cheek. Every fairytale she had ever heard featured such a warrior. And thousands by now had to be praying for his arrival.
    If he were to come, Kora thought with scorn, the Giver had better send him soon, so he could fix things up north in the capital. How much worse could conditions get before they matched those so broadly painted in the legend?
     
    * * *
     
    Kora rose the next morning to find her mother already up. Feigning a better sleep than she experienced, she said she was going for a walk.
    “Wait ‘til it’s warmer,” her mother suggested.
    “More soldiers come out when it’s warm. And I don’t mind a brisk breeze.”
    The crisp weather spurred Kora on, and she traveled the quarter mile to Opal’s house in record time. She hid the shorthand notes in her tattered jacket. She had to squash them, but they were safe, and the one soldier in her path never gave her a second thought. Had he been in the search party the night before? Kora had not marked faces in the wheatfield, and did not trust herself to meet the man’s eyes in daylight. She only felt calm when the compromising pages disappeared beneath Opal’s door. Then Kora went home to weave; the morning dragged on, and her meager lunch of bread and cheese did little to shorten the minutes.
    “You look awful,” said her mother, when they set to weave again.
    “I’m just tired. It’s that time of the afternoon.”
    “You should rest.”
    “A little sunlight would do me better. You’ll be needing more thread by week’s end, I’ll go buy a couple spools.”
    Kora left the house again, this time in the direction of the general store. Zacry was coming up the road to meet her, on time for once. His face was red and his expression a scowl; Kora started to look at him.
    “What happened?” she demanded. He turned his back to her, and she gasped to see bloodstains on his shirt, across his shoulder blade; he lifted the fabric to expose a long but shallow cut, then dropped it almost instantly as the wind must have stung his wound. Kora spun him around, her hands shaking.
    “Guess what Old Man Gared taught this morning?” Zacry asked.
    His sister stumbled over her tongue. “He’s not…. Zac, he’s not that old. Did he do that?”
    “The Revolt. That was the lesson, the Sorcerer’s Revolt. He called Hansrelto an activist and a pioneer. I called Mr. Gared a liar, and he whipped me with a branch, a jagged one. Hansrelto noble…. Everyone knows what that monster was! He was Zalski before Zalski, he just failed is all!”
    Kora felt sick to her stomach, too sick to comment on her brother’s revelations. “Go inside. Straight to your room. Hide that shirt and don’t bother Mother with this, she worries enough, do you hear me?”
    Zacry trudged through the door, and Kora altered her path to pass by the school.
    Years had passed since Kora stepped inside the schoolhouse. The place was much as she remembered, with dirty wooden floors and dark brick walls, its long tables arranged in rows. Mr. Gared seemed all that had changed. His brown hair had grayed, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses he had not owned when Kora was his student. He sat alone at the front of the room, looking through a stack of papers on his scratched and dented desk.
    “I thought you might be coming,” he said. “Take a seat.”
    Kora ignored his request, opting to march up to him. “How dare you beat my brother?”
    “Did I ever whip your classmates without reason?”
    “Zac did nothing wrong. He spoke the truth, that’s all he did, you pathetic….”
    Mr. Gared kept his temper; he asked Kora again if she would like to take a seat. Kora yanked a chair from behind the nearest table and threw herself in it.
    “I realize my lesson today was