The Wizard Lord

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Good,” Merrilin said. Then she turned to the Seer. “So why have you come?”

  The Seer quickly regained her composure, and said, “The Wizard Lord has done something terrible—the Scholar and I realized this a few weeks ago, and we and the Swordsman investigated and saw the proof. While we were there we heard the Wizard Lord confess his guilt through the voice of a crow, so there is no possible doubt. We’re gathering all the Chosen, so that we can confront the Wizard Lord and demand his abdication—and if he refuses, we will slay him, as we are bound to do by our oaths.”

  “I am bound by oath to stay by my husband and raise our children,” Merrilin said. “I think that takes precedence over any oath I swore when I was just a silly girl.”

  “But you did swear!”

  “Because I didn’t think it meant anything. I thought it would be . . . I don’t know, exciting, I suppose, to be one of the Chosen. One of eight in all the world, out of all the millions of people in Barokan—I thought I would be special!”

  “You are special,” the Seer insisted.

  “Oh, indeed I am,” Merrilin agreed. “If I do not take something that does not belong to me undetected, or open a lock without a key, or enter someone else’s home uninvited and unseen, or perform any of a dozen other sordid acts three times each and every day, then I am struck down by headaches and chills and cramps. How very special! Thank all the ler that slipping my children’s toys from their places is sufficient thievery, and nothing prevents me from then returning those toys to their rightful owners!”

  “You must practice your skills,” the Archer said. “So do we all. I must shoot at a dozen targets a day without a miss, Sword here must put in an hour of practice—your burden is not so great as all that!”

  “And what do I get for my practice? Skills I cannot use! I am no thief; why should I take what isn’t mine? You, Archer, you can boast of your skill, and show everyone what you can do—but what can I do? If I admit to being the Chosen Thief, everyone begins to check pockets and purses and locks, and no one will come near me. It doesn’t matter if I promise not to steal, no matter how I swear it—I am the world’s greatest thief, a master of subterfuge and deception! I cannot be trusted for a moment. And of course, by the time I realized this, my childhood friends all knew who and what I had become, and then all of Turnip Corner knew, and I was an outcast in my own home!”

  “That’s unfortunate . . .” the Scholar began.

  “So I left,” she said. “I told them I was going to travel, as the Chosen are said to do, and I left, and I came to Quince Market and told them I was an orphan and made a new life for myself, and I met Sezen, and he wooed me and wed me, and I’m happy here!”

  “Deceiving your husband?” the Seer asked.

  “No!” Merrilin turned to face her. “I told him, before we were married. He knows all about it—and he doesn’t care. He loves me, no matter what silly oaths I may have taken, and that’s why I’m staying right here, with him and with our children. You can go kill the Wizard Lord if you want, but you’ll have to do it without my help.”

  “Why haven’t you passed on the role, if you find it unsuitable?” the Scholar asked.

  “And inflict it on someone else? Anyone who can be trusted with it wouldn’t want it, and anyone who wants it shouldn’t have it. And there are times—do you have any children?”

  “Not that I know of,” the Scholar replied.

  “Well, there are times when it is useful for a mother to know how to open things, how to take things from their owners, and so on. But when the children are grown, then I will find a wizard and choose someone else, and free myself of this curse.”

  “The Wizard Lord slaughtered an entire town,” the Seer said angrily. “Men, women, and children, down to the babes in their cradles. Your so-called curse can help us avenge them, and prevent him from ever doing it again.”

  Merrilin hesitated.

  “He did?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Stoneslope, in the Galbek Hills.”

  “I never heard of it.”

  No one had an immediate response to that, and after a moment Merrilin added, “It isn’t any of my business. I never heard of this place. It’s all a long way off.”

  “But you’re one of the Chosen,” the Archer said. “We’re supposed to protect everyone from the Wizard Lord.”

  “You said he already destroyed this town.”

  The Archer looked to Breaker for support.

  “He did,” Breaker said. “And we need to avenge them and make sure he never does it again somewhere else. Next time it might be my home, or yours.”

  “There’s no reason for him to hurt anyone here,” Merrilin said. “We never bothered him. I’ve never even seen him. Why would he bother us?”

  “Because he’s mad,” the Archer said. “There’s no telling what he’ll do!”

  “Who says so?”

  “We do!”

  “And why should I believe you?”

  “Because we’re the Chosen! And so are you!”

  “I don’t want to be, anymore.”

  “Then you should pass the talisman on,” the Seer said. “Find a wizard and arrange it.”

  “ ‘Find a wizard’? Where? I haven’t seen a wizard since I first accepted that thing! And I can’t go looking for one; I have a family to care for.”

  That caught Breaker’s attention—she hadn’t seen a wizard in all those years? While it was true that wizards seemed to be very scarce in the Midlands, hadn’t the Old Swordsman said that wizards checked on the Chosen every so often?

  If so, they presumably must have missed one.

  And Breaker hadn’t seen a wizard since the day after he became the Chosen Swordsman; was that significant? Wizards seemed less common than he had expected.

  But that had nothing to do with the Thief’s reluctance to join them.

  For a moment the five of them stared at her; then the Scholar said, “The next time we meet a wizard, we’ll tell him you’d like to hand on the responsibility. I’m sure the Council will send someone to attend to it.”

  “I . . .” Merrilin hesitated, looking from one to the next, then shrugged. “Good. Do that, then. But I’m not coming with you.”

  “Fair enough,” the Scholar said.

  “No, it isn’t!” the Archer protested. “She has an obligation! A role to fill!”

  “I think we can manage without her,” the Scholar replied. “The Chosen have before, after all.”

  The Archer had opened his mouth to argue, but then stopped. “They have?” he said.

  “Three times,” the Scholar said. “The first two Dark Lords were deposed before the first Thief was chosen, and in the three hundred and fifth year of the Wizard Lords, the Dark Lord of Kamith t’Daru killed the Thief before the Chosen had gathered to oppose him.”

  “He did?”

  “You see? I can’t risk it!” Merrilin said. “Now, go away, all of you!” She turned to go inside.

  “You knew this might happen when you first agreed,” the Seer called angrily.

  “No, I did not,” Merrilin retorted over her shoulder. “We had a wise and honorable Wizard Lord, and there hadn’t been a bad one in a hundred years! I didn’t think there would ever be another Dark Lord. If I had, I’d never have let myself be talked into anything—and I am not letting myself be talked into anything now. Now, go away, all of you!” She stamped into her house and slammed the door.

  The five of them stood for a moment; then the Archer asked, “Should I go in after her?”

  The Scholar, rather than replying, asked the Seer, “Where is Boss?”

  The Seer blinked, then looked at him, and pointed to the east. “That way,” she said. “Near Winterhome.”

  “Is he with the Beauty, then?”

  The Seer shook her head. “No. But they’re not far apart.”

  “Then perhaps we should just go find Boss, and if he thinks we need the Thief, we can stop here on
the way to the Galbek Hills. It is almost on the way, isn’t it?”

  The Seer glanced to the southwest—toward the Wizard Lord, Breaker was sure—and then to the east. She nodded.

  “Almost,” she agreed. “I think you’re right. Let Boss decide.”

  “Then I shouldn’t go in?” the Archer asked, audibly disappointed.

  “No, of course not,” Breaker said. “It’s her home. She has children in there—you’d scare them half to death. And we can’t force her to help—how would that work? She’d probably just get some of us killed.” He nodded at the others. “Seer’s right. Let the Leader decide what to do about her.”

  “I don’t like it,” the Archer said.

  “I thought you were the one who said the two of us should go kill the Wizard Lord by ourselves!”

  “I . . . well, you . . . Um.” The Archer considered that for a moment. He grimaced. “Fine, then. Let’s go to Winterhome. Where do we find a guide for the next leg?”

  [21]

  By the time they first glimpsed the pennants of Winterhome the Eastern Cliffs towered far above them and seemed to block out half the sky ahead. The sun had not become visible until well after dawn that morning, and they had begun the day’s walk in the shadow of the cliffs.

  The experience was a strange one—predawn gloom on the ground, but a bright blue sky above. Breaker had seen similar conditions down by the river below Mad Oak sometimes, when he wandered through the ridge’s shadow at just the right time, but there it had been just a matter of minutes before the sun broke over the ridgetop and full day arrived. Here, the sun did not appear until well after the sky had turned blue and the western world come alight.

  And when at last the sun did clear the clifftops it was as if the travelers had suddenly been flung from dawn to midday—the temperature seemed to soar, and the whole world around them to blaze up in color and light, while the still-shaded terrain ahead was plunged into darkness as their eyes adjusted.

  Their guide on this route was a tall, thin man who wore an entire crest of white ara feathers rather than a mere decorated hat, the feathers’ curling tips fluttering above his head as he marched up the gentle but increasingly rocky slope that seemed to extend endlessly eastward. When Breaker glimpsed the flutter of a pennant deep in the shadows ahead he thought at first that it was one of the guide’s feathers, but then he realized that what he saw moving was red and gold, not white.

  “Is that a bird?” he asked, pointing.

  “It’s a flag,” the Archer said. “There are more of them farther on, see?”

  “Pennants,” the Scholar said, peering into the gloom. “The Uplanders use them to mark each clan’s holdings.”

  “Are the Uplanders here, then?” Breaker glanced around; the weather was pleasantly cool, but definitely not yet winter. The world around them was still more green than brown, and a few late wildflowers bloomed here and there.

  “No—they would still be atop the cliffs, though perhaps the earliest are making their way toward us. The pennants are so they can find the right place when they come down for the winter.”

  “Don’t they get tattered and faded, if they fly constantly from spring to autumn?”

  “The Host People take care of them somehow, I suppose.”

  “Who are the Host People?” the Archer asked, turning. “I know the Uplanders are the people who live atop the cliffs and come down to shelter for the winter, but I’ve never heard of the Host People.”

  Breaker wondered where the Archer was from, that he had never heard of the Host People—in Mad Oak everyone knew how even the Uplanders could not survive winters on the plateau, and that the Host People readied Winterhome for them each year.

  “Well, look at the place—those buildings the flags are on? Someone has to take care of those the rest of the year,” the Scholar explained. “And someone has to set up the markets where the Uplanders buy their supplies, and make everything ready for them, and stock the warehouses and granaries to see them through the winter. That’s the Host People. They live in Winterhome year-round.”

  “Wait a minute.” The Archer stopped walking. “You mean this place we’re going, Winterhome—it’s where the Uplanders spend the winter?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “But I thought they weren’t subject to the Wizard Lord! What would Boss and the Beauty be doing there?”

  “No, no,” the Scholar said. “The Uplands aren’t subject to the Wizard Lord—his authority stops at the cliffs, just as Barokan does. You’re quite right about that. But the Uplanders are subject to the same laws as anyone else in Barokan when they come down here for the winter. Winterhome doesn’t get any special treatment—well, no more so than anywhere else; naturally, it has its own ler and its own priesthood and so on.”

  “But . . .” The Archer fell in step beside the Scholar, while Breaker walked on the other side. For a moment he fumbled for words, while the other two men waited.

  “The stories I heard as a child,” the Archer said finally, “said that the Uplanders had climbed the cliffs to get away from the whole system of priests and priesthoods—that the land of the great plateau doesn’t have ler the way Barokan does, it’s dead and barren, without soul or spirit, and the Uplanders like it like that. That’s supposed to be why there are no trees up there, just grassland and ara, and why ara feathers are protection against hostile ler—because ara are the only living creatures with no ler of their own, and the feathers shield them from any ler that might want to invade and possess them.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that story, among others,” the Scholar agreed. “But I discover that I can’t recall the details of any of the accounts that say there are no spirits in the Uplands. I therefore believe there may well be ler atop the cliffs, and the Uplanders may well have priests—but they don’t speak of these things to outsiders, so I can’t say for certain.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easy to tell, though?” Breaker asked. “You’ve been in a lerless place, when we stayed in the guesthouses in Seven Sides; you know what it’s like. Couldn’t you climb the cliffs and see whether the plateau has that same dead feeling?”

  The Scholar looked at him, then looked to the east. He pointed.

  “Climb that?” he said.

  Breaker saw his point—the cliffs loomed over them like a dark wall across the world, impossibly high and forbidding, blotting out the eastern sky. Still, everyone knew there was a way up on the far side of Winterhome, where a portion of the cliff had crumbled and a path had been made. “The Uplanders do it every year,” he pointed out.

  “The Uplanders have far better reasons than I!”

  Breaker was not entirely convinced—after all, the Scholar was supposed to learn everything he could about the entire world. Before he could argue, however, the Scholar turned to the Archer and said, “At any rate, whatever may hold true in the Uplands, the Host People have priests and ler just like anyone else, and the Uplanders live by their rules during the winter.”

  “But if they fled to the Uplands to escape the priests . . .”

  “Apparently, if they did, then they found Upland winters to be even worse than priests.”

  Breaker grimaced. He thought that would depend which priests. Presumably the priesthood of the Host People was not particularly dreadful.

  “And be glad they are,” the Scholar added. “Else we would have no ara feathers, nor beaks nor eggs nor meat, nor the hollow bones. The Uplanders bring those down to trade, but I doubt they would bother if they were not coming down to shelter here.”

  By this time the party was past the customary boundary shrine and approaching the first of several immense buildings. It was constructed with massive stone walls rising for two stories, and a third story of wood and plaster atop that, all beneath a steep overhanging roof; the windows were all shuttered and barred, save for a few on the top floor. A long red pennant bearing an elaborate golden design flew from a pole at the eastern gable; Breaker could see that the heart of the design was a r
unning bird, presumably an ara.

  And beyond this first structure stood another, similar in outline but different in detail, flying a red banner that showed three golden hawks.

  And beyond that was a third, whose pennant bore a crown and spear, and across the road from it a fourth with a dragon banner, and so on, deep into the cliffs’ shadows.

  And with each of these great buildings, the road in front showed more wear. When at last the sun broke over the clifftops Breaker could see that the road ahead grew ever wider as it climbed the slope to the east, and that it was churned into mud for as far as he could see.

  “I would guess preparations are being made for the Uplanders’ arrival,” the Scholar remarked.

  “Boss is still down here, though,” the Seer said. “That way.” She pointed ahead and to the right.

  “What about the Beauty?” the Archer asked.

  “That way,” the Seer replied, pointing ahead and to the left.

  “So they’re both staying with the Host People?”

  “So it would seem.”

  “I wonder why?” Breaker said.

  “Well, the Beauty has lived here for years,” the Seer said. “I have no idea why Boss is here.”

  “Which one do we find first?” the Archer asked.

  “Boss,” the Seer replied. “He’s the Leader.”

  The Speaker interrupted her perpetual mumbling to say, “Farash inith Kerra das Bik abba Terrul sinna Oppor carries the talisman of the Leader of the Chosen, but the ler say he has never truly led anyone.”

  “Well, he’s never had a reason to,” the Seer retorted.

  “Until now,” the Archer said.

  “He has used his magic, and called upon the ler bound to him,” the Speaker said. “He has cajoled and wheedled and deceived, planned and devised, seduced and appeased, ordered and commanded, but never truly led.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Breaker said uneasily.

  “Oh, ignore her,” the Seer said. “I’ve known Boss for ten years, since he wasn’t much older than you are, and he’s a decent enough man.”

  Breaker glanced at the Speaker, but having said her piece she was now bent over, hands over her ears, reacting to some other unheard voice by muttering “No, no, never that, no, no, never,” endlessly.