The Wizard Lord

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  As soon as Breaker heard the guide was in town he hurried up to the pavilion, where he found the traveler sitting on a bench surrounded by women. It was not immediately obvious just what had attracted them all; they were staring at something spread on the bench beside the guide, pointing and chattering happily.

  “What’s that?” Breaker asked.

  Several of the women turned. “Jewelry,” one of them said.

  “Ah.” Breaker knew that the guides sometimes brought trade goods of one sort or another; there weren’t enough people along their routes who needed guiding or had messages to send to make constant traveling worthwhile, so they augmented their regular services with lace, cosmetics, jewelry, tools, spices, feathers, and the like—small, valuable items that wouldn’t weigh them down and that the barges didn’t bother with.

  “Was there something I can help you with, Young Swordsman?” the guide asked.

  Breaker took a deep breath, and said, “I need a guide. I’m going to the Galbek Hills.”

  “Oh? I’ve never been there. I can get you as far as Valleymouth, at the edge of the Midlands, but from there you’ll need to find someone else.”

  “Good enough.” Breaker tried not to notice that several of the women were staring at him now.

  “Would tomorrow morning suit you? I’d like to stay here tonight, perhaps sell some of this jewelry.”

  “Of course. Tomorrow would be fine.”

  “Then shall we meet here, tomorrow at midmorning?”

  “That sounds very good,” Breaker said. “Thank you.”

  “Make sure you bring your pack—we’ll leave directly from here.”

  “My what?”

  “Your pack. Your luggage. The belongings you’re bringing with you.”

  Someone giggled.

  “Oh. Of course.” Flustered, Breaker turned away, his face reddening.

  He felt foolish—and he resented that. He was a man—a young one, still unmarried, but a man. Furthermore, he was one of the Chosen. He should not, he told himself, be so easily thrown off-stride. An unfamiliar term and a girl’s laugh should not leave him blushing like a silly child.

  And the next day he was waiting in the pavilion, his barley-sack pack at his side, his talisman secure beneath his tunic, and his sword on his belt, when the Greenwater Guide arrived.

  The guide was a stocky, middle-aged man, the same man who had brought the former Swordsman to Mad Oak, and who had led him away three months earlier; he alone had worked the roads from Mad Oak to Ashgrove in the north and Greenwater in the southwest for as long as Breaker could remember. Despite the warmth of the late spring day he wore a long leather coat with ara feathers around the collar, across the shoulders, and down the sleeves and back, as well as the traditional guide’s feathered hat. He glanced at the sack, but made no comment about it.

  He did ask, however, “How do you plan to pay me?”

  “Uh . . .”

  That caught Breaker completely off-guard; he had not thought about payment.

  “Do you have any money?”

  “No—why would I have money? I’m going overland.”

  The guide sighed. “The bargemen aren’t the only ones who use money, lad—you’ll see that soon enough. In the Midlands everyone carries money, and everything is bought and sold; they’d laugh if they saw how you people up here manage.”

  “What’s wrong with how we manage?”

  “Oh, nothing, for a village of brewers and bean-farmers, but in the wider world things get too complex for your everyone works, everyone shares system. No matter, you’ll see soon enough—and you’ll want to get your hands on a few coins as soon as you can. For now, though—do you expect me to see you safely to Valleymouth out of the kindness of my heart?”

  Breaker had, in fact, expected exactly that, but it was clear that saying so would not be wise. “Do the Chosen get no special privileges, then?”

  “Not from me.”

  Breaker frowned. “Then my mother will cook you a dinner, when next you come to Mad Oak—will that be sufficient? Perhaps Harp might play a tune for you, as well.”

  The guide nodded, a sharp motion that set the long white plumes on his hat bobbing. “Good enough,” he said. “And you think you have everything you need?”

  “I hope so,” Breaker replied. He hesitated, glancing at the guide’s clothing, then said, “Except perhaps a few ara feathers, to guard me on the road.”

  “You’re one of the Chosen, are you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then surely the ler protect you, and you don’t need feathers.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “The old man got here without any.”

  “So he did. Lead on, then.”

  The guide snorted, but without another word he did exactly that, picking up his own pack and slinging it on his shoulder as he led the way toward the uphill door.

  Breaker heaved his own bulkier load onto his back and followed, bound for the wilderness—or at least, the lands beyond Mad Oak that he had always thought of as wilderness.

  The two of them marched quickly along the ridgetop, out of the village, past the herbalist’s gardens, and up to the boundary shrine. The guide marched past it without hesitation, but Breaker could not so easily overcome a lifetime of training; he paused at the little stone structure, unable to continue immediately.

  This was it; this was the point at which he would leave Mad Oak behind—though he could see the tree itself looming ahead of them, this was where the village ended. Beyond this point the town’s priests could no longer talk to the ler, could no longer bargain with them and coax them to be generous. This was where he left his old life behind and entered the larger world beyond.

  The guide glanced back and slowed his pace, but obviously did not intend to stop, despite his charge’s hesitation.

  Annoyed, Breaker bobbed his head quickly and said, “I thank you, spirits of my homeland, and pray that I may return safely to your protection.” The prayer seemed appropriate—he had heard it said by others as they left Mad Oak—and provided an excuse for his delay.

  Then he hastened past the shrine to catch up with the guide on the path—the trail was too narrow and faint to really deserve the name “road,” Breaker thought.

  And the minute he crossed the boundary, the world around him felt different; the air was suddenly cooler and somehow harder, the ground rougher beneath his boot soles, and everything felt somehow less unified, less part of a harmonious whole. He had always heard that the difference between a place where the ler knew you and one where you were a stranger was noticeable, but he hadn’t expected it to be quite so abrupt a transition—especially not after having spent the last several months feeling ever more disconnected from Mad Oak. He gasped.

  The guide did not respond, and Breaker broke into a trot to catch up. He stumbled on the hostile and unfamiliar ground, but hurried on, and a moment later he came alongside the guide. “I’ve never been outside town before,” he explained. “It feels so different!”

  The guide acknowledged this with a grunt.

  “It’s . . . it’s a bit frightening, really.”

  That drew only a nod, and the guide’s silence began to worry Breaker. “Have I done something to annoy you?” he asked.

  The guide sighed, and turned. “Do you think I’d have become a traveler if I liked talking to people?”

  “Oh,” Breaker said. “But you . . . I mean, you talked back in town, and you don’t always travel alone . . .”

  “I have to earn my keep, don’t I?”

  “Oh.”

  “And as for doing that earning, do you see that tree ahead? The big oak?” He pointed.

  The tree the guide indicated was gigantic, and very familiar; Breaker had seen it from Mad Oak every time he looked to the southeast, as it towered above its surroundings. “Yes, of course,” he said. “That’s the Mad Oak that the town is named for; there are all sorts of stories told about it to scare children, so they won’t cross
the border. I don’t know why it’s really called that, though.”

  “Oh, it really is the main reason the town’s lands come no farther along the ridge, and why the priests have made no attempt to tame the ler beyond the shrine. Those scary stories you heard may well be true. It’s called the Mad Oak because the tree’s ler has gone mad, more than a century ago, and will not speak to the other ler, or to the village priests. If you speak in its hearing it will strike at you; if you sleep beneath it, it will devour your soul, and what’s left of your body will go to feed its roots. If you touch it, it will poison you or cut you or club you. If you move swiftly and silently beneath it, without stopping and without speaking, it will not notice you. Now, be silent, and follow me.”

  With that the guide crouched and began hurrying forward in an odd, stooped posture. Breaker did his best to imitate this.

  Together, the two men dashed across the broad clearing around the oak—a clearing that Breaker noticed was brown and dead, despite the lush green of the surrounding area and the blossoming leaves of the Mad Oak itself. Dead leaves rustled and crumbled beneath their boots as they hurried, brown powder scattering in all directions and staining Breaker’s legs. There were no green shoots anywhere, no weeds, no moss, no mold, just dead leaves. It was plain that nothing lived in the clearing, nothing at all but the immense oak.

  Stooped as he was, Breaker found himself looking down at the deep layer of dead leaves, surely the accumulation of many years, as he ran, and he realized that here and there low mounds rose above the even surface, and that here and there these mounds revealed curves and corners of white bone, gleaming amid the rotting brown leaves.

  This was a bad place; he could feel that. The air around him felt wrong, far more than it had when he first passed the boundary, and that strange and horrible ground cover only confirmed the wrongness. The sensation reminded him somewhat of the wrongness he had felt that day when he went out without his talisman, though there was no weakness or illness this time—just a certainty that this place was wrong.

  And he knew that just as he had felt the wrongness of the place, it had felt something of him. He could not have explained how he knew, but he did.

  The oak knew he was there, he was sure of it—it must have sensed his magic.

  He looked up, trying to see how much farther he had to go, and saw that he had somehow veered from the guide’s path, toward the great oak—the oak he could now see was twisted and bent, despite its size. Its house-thick trunk was distorted by bulging growths, its limbs crooked and spiraling; these abnormalities that had been largely hidden by the canopy of healthy green leaves, but he was under the leaves now .. .

  That wasn’t right. Why was he under the leaves, so close to the tree? The guide had not ventured so near, and Breaker had certainly not intended to.

  But something was urging him even closer, drawing him in. The oak’s ler was pulling at him, closing its hold around his own spirit.

  He slowed, and tried to turn his feet back toward the guide’s track, clearly marked by the line of crushed and scattered leaves his boots had left.

  His feet would not turn. The oak had hold of him. He struggled, trying to turn.

  He could not. Against his will, he was still placing one foot directly in front of the other, walking toward the hideous tree.

  He could not turn, but he could slow his pace. He could not stop, though—he tried, and his own legs refused to obey him. Dead leaves and distorted limbs filled his sight and his mind, and even as he struggled to stop his movement forward he could feel his own thoughts becoming twisted and somehow treelike.

  At last, though he could not stop, he stumbled, and the dry snap of old bones breaking echoed in the unnatural stillness beneath the great tree. One hand dropped toward the ground to steady him if he fell, and the other hand closed instinctively on the hilt of his sword, as his sack shifted awkwardly and almost fell from his shoulder.

  Touching the grip of the sword seemed to wake him, though he had had no awareness of being asleep; the cold ferocity of the weapon’s ler was like a rush of wind in his face, and he was suddenly free again, able to turn his steps and break into a flat-out run directly away from that hideous tree. His booted feet sent clouds of crumbled leaf into the air, and scattered bits of bone across the clearing; he ducked his head to avoid touching the lowest branches.

  And then the guide was beckoning him forward, out of the clearing and into the shade of a towering ash, and the malign influence of the oak faded from his mind like a warm breath vanishing in midwinter air, replaced by the calm presence of the ash tree’s sane, if disdainful, spirit. Breaker turned to look back, and started to say, “I never . . .”

  The guide pressed a finger to his lips and shook his other hand side to side, indicating that he should not speak. Breaker snapped his mouth shut and nodded, and the two men proceeded in silence, under the ash and on into the forest beyond.

  Breaker could sense the ler of every tree they passed, and they were all different; in Mad Oak the trees were cooperative parts of a greater whole, but out here they were all individuals, pressing close to one another but caring for nothing but themselves. Breaker would have liked to slow down and take time to feel their spirits, to see how this strange wilderness worked, but the guide was hurrying him on.

  At last, when they were safely clear of the oppressive atmosphere of the Mad Oak, the guide said, “I thought you were one of the Chosen.”

  “I am,” Breaker said, glancing up at the sunlight in the leaves overhead.

  “Shouldn’t you have greater resistance to magic than that, then? That’s the closest I’ve come to losing a customer in the past ten years. I didn’t bother giving you any feathers or casting a spell because I assumed your magic would protect you. It should have protected you; it protected the Old Swordsman well enough when he came north. Going south with me he used feathers, of course, and a talisman, but he said he’d never needed them when he was one of the Chosen.”

  “I’m sorry,” Breaker said, lowering his gaze. “I’m new at it. I didn’t know how to use my magic to protect myself. The tree’s spell broke when I touched my sword, though, so I think I . . . It did help. Being Chosen.”

  “It shouldn’t have gotten a hold on you in the first place. Maybe you should wear a feather after all . . .” He reached for his pack.

  “I’ll be fine,” Breaker said, holding up a hand. If the Chosen were supposed to be immune to the hostile ler on the road, then he would play that part, he would focus himself on his sword and talisman and not use the magic-blocking feathers the Uplanders sold. Maybe assuming it was true would make it so—and if not, he had the guide to save him.

  “If you ever have to fight the Wizard Lord, I hope you do better,” the guide said.

  “So do I,” Breaker said, looking back at the Mad Oak with a shudder. Then he squared his shoulders, straightened his sack, and marched onward at the guide’s heel.

  A few moments later he asked, “If the Mad Oak is so dangerous, why do you take this route? Isn’t there any other path to Greenwater?”

  “The others are worse.”

  Breaker opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  “Oh,” he said at last.

  The Mad Oak was the worst of the hazards they encountered, but by no means the only one, and their route detoured around several areas the guide said made the oak seem like a mere game. Even as they made their way through the forest along the supposedly safe paths, vines twisted around Breaker’s feet, hostile eyes watched him from the shadows, branches whipped at his face—he began to see, he thought, why the guide wore that leather coat.

  But when he looked at the guide, somehow nothing seemed to be bothering him—even as branches slashed at Breaker’s arms, they seemed to move aside for the guide. Breaker remarked on this.

  “They know me,” the guide said. “I’ve made my peace with them. And they know this coat will protect me, too. They might well do far worse to you if I weren’t with you, or if
you had no magical protection—as it is, you might have a slap or a scratch here and there, but nothing that will leave a permanent mark. If you weren’t one of the Chosen and tried to make this trip alone, you might not make it to Greenwater alive.”

  “But they don’t touch you at all.”

  “They know me,” the guide repeated.

  “So you’re a priest of this road, then? You speak to the ler, and treat with them?”

  “I’m no priest. I don’t know any secret tongues. I speak with some of the ler along my route, the ones that deign to understand human words, and I know which to avoid entirely, but there are no compacts or covenants, no cooperation between them. I don’t know their true names, I can’t tell them what to do, who to let pass—if you seriously anger them, I can’t save you. These are wild ler, boy, every one for itself, not a peaceful little community like your town of Mad Oak.”

  A dry twig snapped beneath Breaker’s foot, and the sharp broken end leapt up to slash at his shin; he winced, though the scratch did not break the skin or draw blood. “I see that,” he said.

  “This is what most of the world is like, you know—wild and uninhabited.”

  “I know.”

  “You mean you’ve been told that; you won’t know it until you’ve seen more of the wild.”

  Breaker knew better to argue with such a statement.

  “So without you, Mad Oak and Greenwater would be cut off from each other?”

  “Oh, there would still be other routes, but it would be a long way around—maybe a very long way.”

  “Do you have an apprentice, then?”

  “No. Your townsfolk might want to think about that.”

  That was another statement that Breaker did not care to reply to. Instead he asked, “What’s Greenwater like? I mean, I’ve heard stories about it all my life, but I’ve never been there.”