Hexes of the Fall (The Hex King Book 1), page 23
“I heard it’s a hexed blade,” a different young lord said. “Is that true?”
Genry blinked. He’d been so preoccupied with everything going on—the House Forum, the monster in Old Oath Cottage, training for his duel—that he’d forgotten all about that rumor.
“I don’t think so. I think the hexed blades are all long gone,” he said, repeating what Lady Tagan had told him when he’d asked the same question.
“My uncle has one,” the niece of some Pioran baron said. “Or so he says. I haven’t seen it for myself.”
“How does he know it’s a hexed blade?” Genry asked skeptically.
The niece shrugged. “It doesn’t rust. They say no matter what you do, a hexed blade never breaks. And if you stick it in a fire, it doesn’t tarnish or grow hot.”
“Well, I don’t want to stick Illuminator in a fire,” Genry said. “Whatever else it is, it’s still a priceless historical artifact. I don’t want to break it just to prove it isn’t hexed. I’ve been meaning to ask the hexmaster about it, actually, but I haven’t had the time.”
He winced, dreading the thought of talking to Dryward so soon after he’d broken into his offices. Genry knew he was a bad liar and was likely to say something regrettable if the hexmaster asked him any questions about where he’d been yesterday.
“Oh, you don’t need a hexmaster; you need a priest!” the nephew of Duchess Cathil Tai-Gaullad said.
“A priest?”
“Yes! The reason hexed blades don’t rust is because they’re haunted by the spirits of those who were slain during the Age of Tyranny.”
Genry squinted at the lad dubiously. “What?”
“It’s true,” another young noble interjected excitedly. “Except I heard that they’re haunted by the ghosts that served the Tyrant, not those that were slain.”
“Haunted?” Genry repeated, perplexed. “And the ghosts, whoever they are, haunt the blade by … keeping it polished?”
“Apparently,” the nephew said cheerfully. “I’ve also heard that they can possess the wielder in the heat of battle and help them win their fights.” He shrugged apologetically, acknowledging how outlandish it sounded. “That’s what happened to Sir Felleri of Rexal, according to the stories. He started as just a regular treasure hunter, but he changed after he found a hexed blade deep in the ancient tomb of some Old Kingdom warlord. He started talking about ‘serving the king’ by doing battle against the ‘children of Ith,’ and he became obsessed with killing monsters. Only trouble was, this was back during the reign of Queen Sofira, and Thaedra didn’t have a king. It was like he was possessed by a Solian ghost from the Age of Tyranny, who still believed that the Tyrant was alive.” The nephew laughed at Genry’s spooked expression. “It’s probably just a story,” he said, waving his hand as if to dispel the idea. “But still, you might want to bring that sword of yours to a priest of Sol rather than the hexmaster.”
“Well, that suits me,” Genry muttered, reclaiming his seat. “Solace knows I’m not exactly eager to talk to Dryward if I can help it.”
His friends all laughed at that, and the conversation returned to safer topics.
After the feast, Genry danced until the fires burned low. He had thought he was too tired for much cavorting, but he found he was able to forget his fatigue once he’d gotten started. He spun through the Great Hall as if in a dream, moving in time with all the other dancers. He felt that they not only moved along with him but that he caused them to move, as if he were a spoon stirring the contents of a stew.
But, as the music grew slower and the opportunities for conversation lengthened, he found himself besieged by veiled questions and cunning comments with double meanings. They all wanted to know what he was thinking, why he did what he did, and why, in short, he wasn’t acting much like a crown heir.
The crown heir was supposed to display the wisdom and equanimity of King Owan, providing an example of how to maintain peaceful relationships, renouncing weapons, and never showing any bias toward any of the great houses.
More exhausted by the talk than by the dances, Genry withdrew in a flurry of apologies and excuses then headed toward his chambers. He felt more than ready to fall into bed, but he paused when he caught sight of Illuminator. It was as beautiful as ever, but he thought he saw a flickering movement in the blade. He couldn’t help but think about what his friends had said about it being haunted.
A loud knock nearly caused him to jump out of his socks.
“Who is it?” he called.
The door opened a crack, and Emersen poked his head through. His serious guard-face alerted him to the fact that someone of considerable importance was with him a moment before his words confirmed it. “Hexmaster Dryward is here and would like a word, My Prince.”
Genry swallowed, his stomach immediately dropping. He realized that, on some level, he had expected this.
Before he could do much more to prepare, Dryward came striding into his room like a thunderstorm, his feet pounding the ground angrily and his robes billowing around him. His eyes, usually so vibrant and piercing, were dark and narrowed as if shadowed by clouds.
Emersen followed Dryward inside and began impersonating a suit of armor beside the door, a fact for which Genry was immensely grateful. He didn’t think Dryward would murder him, but the dangerous tilt of the hexmaster’s impressive eyebrows seemed to indicate otherwise.
Despite his obvious fury, however, the hexmaster’s voice was disturbingly normal as he said, “Hello, Prince Genry. I apologize for intruding at this late hour, but there is a small matter I hope you might be able to illuminate.”
Genry’s heart was pounding. He didn’t know what expression was on his face but had a bad feeling that it was probably reflecting a fair amount of his guilt.
“Uh … well, I-I don’t know if I’ll be able to help, Hexmaster, but go on,” he said defensively.
“Someone broke into my office yesterday while I was busy meeting with members of the Hex Guild. Would you happen to know anything about that?”
Genry’s mind began to whirl through his options. “Your office in the dungeons? Or, uh, down the hill?” he asked to buy himself time and suddenly remembered that he’d witnessed the unauthorized searches of both places.
“Old Oath Cottage,” Dryward replied, eyebrows lowering even further, as if he suspected Genry of being purposefully obtuse.
Genry still didn’t know what to say. If Dryward was already here, confronting him in his room, that meant he probably had fairly solid evidence against him. On the other hand, since it was still a question and not a flat-out accusation, that might mean he wasn’t completely sure. The practice sword, Genry thought. He knows. But maybe he doesn’t know Ellex was there, too.
The silence had grown too long.
“It was me,” Genry blurted before he could think through the consequences. “I broke into Old Oath Cottage. Alone.”
Dryward seemed, for once, at a total loss for words. His lips parted, but no intelligible words came out, allowing for several seconds of flustered noises before he finally managed to say, “I beg your pardon? You broke into my private study? For what possible reason?”
Oh, Genry thought, feeling foolish. He didn’t know. And now he had to think of a good excuse for why he had done such a thing.
Mir Ilaina had said that the best offense was a good defense, but perhaps the opposite was also true.
“Never mind about that,” Genry snapped, deflecting the question. “I saw your weird little pet. Or weird big pet, I should say. What are you doing keeping something like that in a cage?”
“She’s not a pet!” Dryward spat with outrage. “I owe you no explanation! But I will say she was—is!—an Ithian hexer who lost control of her power. I am trying to help her! Now, tell me why you saw fit to break into a space that you had no business being in!”
So much for his theory. Dryward had parried Genry’s offensive strike and had now returned. He had to present some sort of defense.
“I met a witch,” Genry said, realizing he had no particular loyalty toward Lusa, no matter how much Ellex had liked her. “She suggested that you were hiding something, and it seems she was right.”
Dryward’s skin, which was already quite pale, positively blanched. He looked as if he’d died standing upright, eyes wide open. “A witch?” the hexmaster breathed. “Who?”
“She went by the name Lusa,” Genry replied. “Lorelai Lusa.”
Dryward passed a hand over his forehead, and Genry saw that it was shiny with sweat. “Where?”
“She has a room in Alofell’s Wing,” Genry replied, curious at this strange reaction from the hexmaster. “Across from the portrait of Queen Sofira. Why? Do you know her?”
“Oh yes,” Dryward replied, “I do.” His eyes went distant and haunted for a moment before refocusing on Genry. “And if you ever see her again, Prince Genry, you must run and come find me at once. She is the most dangerous person in all of Thaedra, and her presence here bodes ill for us all. I … I must go.”
He wiped his forehead, glanced at Emersen as if he might say something else, then appeared to change his mind and backed out of the room. The departure was so abrupt that it left Genry stunned, half from relief and half from bewilderment. He had never seen Dryward look so anxious before and marveled that Lusa’s name could have such an effect on him. He listened as Dryward’s purposeful footsteps banged down the hall and grew fainter, eventually disappearing as he rounded the corner.
“You snuck into Old Oath Cottage?” Emersen asked, sounding bemused.
He’d been so quiet that Genry had almost forgotten he was there, standing beside the door as if made of metal.
“Uh … yeah,” he replied, oddly feeling more rueful about Emersen finding out than Dryward.
Barely a moment later, Genry heard another set of footsteps outside, these extremely light and orderly. The door was opened again, this time to reveal Lady Tagan on the other side.
“Ah, another visitor,” Genry said. He would normally be annoyed at her for turning up so late and without so much as a knock, but he felt confident that she had come to commend him on his decision to attend the House Forum and on his choice of companion. But Lady Tagan looked grim, even more so than usual.
“You had another visitor?” she demanded in alarm. “Not Lady Isolle, I hope …?”
“No. Solace, no. It was Dryward,” Genry replied. Then he worriedly asked, “Why not Lady Isolle?”
“Oh, my boy,” she said, closing the door as she glided into the room. “My poor, gullible boy. I should have warned you not to attend the House Forum, but I never dreamed that you actually might.” She shook her head in despair.
“What?” Genry asked, baffled. “But aren’t you glad I made friends with Lady Isolle? Isn’t that what you wanted? And what’s wrong with attending the House Forum?”
She seemed to be either entirely unaware of Emersen’s presence or was electing to disregard him.
“You’re new to being the crown heir,” she said. “Friendship is one thing, but the House Forum is a matter of business. Where you sit in the council chamber carries a certain amount of weight. Whether you intended it or not, many will interpret your presence among the Serolina faction as support of them. And, as you are sure to have noticed, they had quite a lot of incendiary things to say.”
Genry deflated, disappointed that she hadn’t come to shower him with the glowing praise that he had expected. “Oh.”
“On the bright side, nobody is going to think you have anything against House Serolina anymore. Quite the contrary.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?” Genry demanded. “Maybe I do side with them. I don’t think Hex Law should be universal, but if Beracco really does have a problem with wild hexers, maybe it would be good to amend the duke’s Oath, like he suggested. Let him have more knights to defend their towns.”
“Oh, my boy,” Lady Tagan said again with that long-suffering look. “You obviously have no concept of what’s going on here.”
“So tell me!” he exclaimed, temper flaring. “I know you said not to worry about the bigger picture, but how else am I to understand these things?”
Lady Tagan regarded him silently for a moment, as if measuring him. “You don’t need to know everything that goes on at court. In fact, it’s better that you don’t. As long as you follow my instructions and heed my counsel, everything will be—”
“No,” Genry interrupted. “Tell me what’s going on. I won’t do as you say unless you tell me.” He had said it calmly but leaned forward and held her gaze so that she would know he was serious.
She looked back for several long seconds then sighed. “I had thought you were the least headstrong of all your siblings,” she muttered. Then she looked at Emersen for the first time since entering and said, “Out.”
Emersen gave a sedate bow and obeyed, his face never betraying the slightest hint that there was a real human mind between the horns on his helmet. He went out without a word and closed the door behind him.
Lady Tagan walked to the table, perched on one of the chairs, and then waited for him to do the same.
“Very well,” she said. “I will try to explain, though you may regret asking.”
Genry waited as she collected her thoughts, both surprised and pleased to have won the argument so easily. The night was fully dark by this time, and the only light was from an orange hex lamp that rested between them on the table.
“Where to start. Duke Rafale wasn’t serious about his request to make Hex Law universal. He knows the queen would never do that. It was merely a buffer to make his real request seem more reasonable, a ploy that apparently worked on you. His true objective was to have the queen relax the militia limitations.”
“So, the duke only wants to increase his military?” Genry asked. “Why?”
“Why indeed,” Lady Tagan said. “He would like for us to believe it’s because of this so-called monster problem in Beracco and that they need the extra knights for protection. But he has elected to hinge this pretext on the testimony of his son. His one oversight is the fact that the strength of these claims relies not only upon a thousand years’ worth of rock-solid Serolina honor but also upon Rhaka’s reliability as a witness.”
“O … kay?”
“So, obviously, the next step is to discredit him as a reliable witness.”
“Uh … What do you mean by that?” he asked uneasily.
“I mean we make him believe things that aren’t true. Like, for example, that your sword is hexed and too dangerous to use in a duel.”
Genry’s chewed his lip nervously. “My friends said it might be haunted by a Solian ghost,” he confessed, hoping his grandmother would render the idea ridiculous with a disparaging laugh. Instead, Lady Tagan’s eyes widened with inspiration.
“That’s perfect,” she said. “I will make sure those rumors run circles around Galan.”
“But why?” Genry demanded, extremely confused. “You think you can make Rhaka think my sword is haunted just by spreading rumors?”
“My dear, I could make Rhaka believe whatever I wanted,” Lady Tagan told him smugly. “I have quite a lot of tricks up my sleeve, and over the next few days, there shall be more than just rumors. He will see evidence—or what he’ll think is evidence—and when it comes time for your duel, he will insist that you use a different blade. When we ask why, he will hopefully repeat all this ridiculous nonsense about ghosts and, if I can pull it off, claim to have seen a few. This will be a tremendous blow to his credibility and will provide the queen with ample reason to reject his testimony.”
“But, what if he was telling the truth?” Genry exclaimed. “What if their monster problems are … you know … real?”
“Don’t be naïve,” Lady Tagan dismissed. “You build a garden to make peace and an army to make war. The timing is no coincidence. Duke Rafale fears that your sister’s magical awakening is a sign that the Age of Peace is ending, and he means to be prepared for what comes after.”
“But what if Rhaka decides to confess to a hex priest?” he asked. People confessed things in the temple every day, but confessing to a hex priest was a little different. Their magic had the uncanny ability to draw forth far more truth than one ever intended to say, causing them to confess things that they had meant to keep private, and even recounting memories that they had thought long forgotten. Sometimes these confessions even resulted in legal punishment, as the hex priests were Oath-bound to report any confessions of illegal activity to the authorities.
“My boy, every noble house has its fair share of secrets, and House Serolina is no exception. There’s no way Rafale will allow his son to do it. The queen only suggested it as a way to buy time,” Lady Tagan declared confidently.
“But what if he does?” Genry persisted. “Then he could confirm that his story was true!”
“No, it would only confirm that he believes the story to be true,” she corrected him. “And if Rhaka is proven to be an unreliable witness, it won’t matter what he believes. Besides, I suspect much of that story was fabricated anyway, which is another reason why he won’t confess.”
“You think he was lying?” Genry demanded. He didn’t think so. To his eyes, Rhaka had seemed nervous but not deceptive.
“Yes,” Lady Tagan replied. “That’s probably what they were arguing about when you overheard them in Hadelyn’s Wing.”
Genry fell silent, thinking, trying to catch up to everything that Lady Tagan had said. “So, let me get this straight,” he said slowly. “You want to fool Rhaka into thinking my sword is haunted so that he’ll undermine his own credibility.”
Lady Tagan nodded.
“And that will call into question his story about the monsters.”
She nodded again.
Genry took a deep breath. He knew what he had to say, and he knew Lady Tagan wasn’t going to like it.
“No.”
“No what?”
“No,” he repeated. “You’re crazy if you think I’m going to go along with this plan. It breaks about a dozen rules in the Knight’s Code. I won’t allow it.”
