"Fair enough." The stout man beckoned to the landlord.
"Do you know who / would like to meet?" one of the others began.
"The Beauty. We know. We all would."
Breaker smiled. "The most beautiful woman in the world—who wouldn't want to meet her, if just to see the standard by which all others might be judged?"
"And is that why you agreed to be the Swordsman, then— so you'd have a chance to get to know her?"
Breaker shook his head. "No—fool that I am, I didn't even think about that aspect of it until after I'd started my training. It certainly wouldn't have discouraged me, though!" His smile faded. "Would you have any idea where she might be found?"
"None at all."
"Nor I."
That was hardly a surprise. The Old Swordsman had said she lived in Winterhome, at the base of the Eastern Cliffs where the trail came down from the Uplands into Barokan, but Breaker was not sure how reliable the old man had been. He had been vaguely hoping these people might know more—if the Beauty were nearby, then visiting her, getting to know another of the Chosen, might have been a good idea.
But she apparently wasn't, and before he could say anything more the landlord was there, and the men fished out a few coins to cover the cost of a platter of ham and vegetables.
As they did, Breaker was thinking over what he had learned. The Leader, or Boss, or whatever he called himself, sounded like a good strong man and a useful ally, worthy of being one of the Chosen, but there was nothing to indicate that he would know much of anything about the Wizard Lord. And the Speaker, if she was truly mad, would be useless.
The Scholar, though—if he had been collecting gossip for years, he might well know more about the Wizard Lord than anyone else. So far, Breaker had not heard a single negative word about the current Wizard Lord from anyone but the Old Swordsman—but he was beginning to notice he hadn't heard anything positive, either. There were hundreds of stories about Wizard Lords righting wrongs and saving lives and so on, but they were all about former Wizard Lords, not the current holder of the title.
Someone must know something about the man, and the Scholar was more likely than anyone else to be that one.
"When was the Scholar last in Barrel?" Breaker asked.
The men looked at one another.
"Last summer, was it?"
"Spring. I'd just been planting the north field."
"That's right—remember, he left just before the priests started looking for the solstice sacrifice."
"Right. Last spring, then."
A year's head start was more than enough to be discouraging, but Breaker had little else to guide his travels; he knew he wanted to head generally southward, toward the Galbek Hills, but other than that his plans were vague. He refused to be distracted by the mention of a solstice sacrifice, and asked, "When he left, which way did he go?"
"Toward Blackwell."
The others nodded.
And the following morning Breaker passed by an exceptionally ugly boundary shrine and headed southeast toward Blackwell.
[13]
Crossing the Midlands took almost half the summer; I midsummer found Breaker in the foothills on the southern edge of the plain, in a town called Dog Pole—a name no one could explain. The local dialect was sufficiently different from the language spoken in Longvale that Breaker was not entirely sure he would have understood the explanation, in any case.
He had noticed as he moved south that the names, for both towns and people, seemed to make less and less sense. Some of them seemed little more than random syllables, rather than descriptions. Most people used the beginnings of true names for each other, as the people of Greenwater had, but nicknames, often bizarre ones, were common; a complete avoidance of true names, as in Mad Oak, was rare.
He had always wondered what "Galbek" meant; he now suspected that it didn't mean anything, but was just a meaningless name given to a particular set of hills. That seemed to be how these Southerners operated.
Of course, he reminded himself, he wasn't really in the South yet, but only just approaching its boundaries.
Along his way he had heard descriptions of several of the other Chosen—the handsome Leader, the gossip-loving Scholar, the mad Speaker, the short-tempered Archer, the motherly Seer. The Beauty and the Thief remained completely unknown; no one would admit meeting either of them.
He had learned very little about the Wizard Lord. Several people had told stories about the previous Wizard Lord— Breaker had not visited Spilled Basket, where he had made his home, but he had passed within about twenty miles of it—or about others even farther back, but hardly anyone knew anything about the present incumbent. The most common response to questions was a shrug and a remark, "The weather's been fine."
He wondered whether the Old Swordsman's fears might have been completely baseless; certainly, he saw no sign that anyone else suspected the Wizard Lord of any sort of misbehavior. No one actually professed to like him, but neither did they fear him. As far as Breaker could tell his journey to visit the Wizard Lord at his home in the Galbek Hills was largely pointless, but he was not inclined to turn back yet; overall, he was enjoying the trip.
He had asked sometimes about other wizards, as well, and had been surprised at how few reports he heard about them. None seemed to make their homes in the Midlands, or at least not in the portion of the Midlands he crossed; a few vague tales and legends trickled in from the west and south, but Breaker was unsure how much credence to give them. He supposed wizards preferred the less-crowded parts of Barokan, but it still seemed somewhat odd.
He had encountered hundreds of strange customs and unfamiliar rites in his traveling, and had become largely inured to them. People did what they had to to live with the ler, and he was no longer surprised by any demands the spirits might make. Appalled, sometimes, but not surprised. He still had trouble believing that people would willingly live in a community whose guardian ler demanded a human sacrifice every spring, but he had encountered at least three such towns.
He had continued to follow reports of the Scholar's presence, which had led him almost directly south—he was unsure what to make of that, whether it was merely coincidence or something else at work. He had gained some ground; the Scholar had reportedly passed through Dog Pole in early spring, no more than three or four months ago.
The Seer had also come this way not so very long ago; he wondered about that.
All in all, he was enjoying his journey, but found it worrisome that he was not learning more about his own role in the world.
One morning he was sitting at a battered table in Dog Pole's one and only public house, wondering whether he should continue following reports of the Scholar's route or try to find his way directly to the Galbek Hills, when the door opened.
He didn't look up at first; he was trying to estimate how long it would take to get back to Mad Oak if he took as direct a route as possible and only stayed a night in each town along the way. If the snows didn't come early he might take another two months to find the Wizard Lord's tower and still be home . . .
"Swordsman?"
Startled, he looked up, his right hand falling to the hilt of his sword. That had become a completely involuntary habit, but one he could not break; he suspected it was part of the magic his role entailed.
The speaker was a somewhat elderly man, rather weathered-looking but still straight-backed and apparently vigorous, clad in well-worn deerhide. "Yes?" Breaker said, returning his hand to the tabletop.
"It's a pleasure to meet you," the white-haired man said, holding out a hand; he spoke the Midlands dialect, but with a thick southern accent. "I'm here to take you to Tumbled Sheep."
Breaker blinked at him. "What?"
"I'm a guide—I know every road in the hills from here to Crooked Valley. I'm here to take you to Tumbled Sheep— it's a village about fifteen miles southeast of here."
Breaker frowned. "Who told you I want to go to Tumbled Sheep?" He was tempted to rema
rk on the bizarre stupidity of naming a village "Tumbled Sheep," but restrained himself; that would just prolong a conversation he wanted to end quickly. He wanted this person to go away and let him think; he was in no great hurry to go anywhere but home, and did not think Tumbled Sheep sounded like a promising destination. He guessed the old man had heard the Swordsman was traveling the area, and wanted to earn himself a guide's fee and the enhanced reputation that aiding any of the Chosen might bring.
"The Seer," the guide said.
Breaker abruptly sat up straight, suddenly attentive. "What?"
"The Seer sent me to fetch you; she and the Scholar are waiting for you in Tumbled Sheep."
"The . .. They are? But how would they know I was here?"
The guide snorted. "There's a reason they call her the Seer, you know."
Breaker had known, of course, that the Seer had magical abilities, and always knew where the other Chosen were, but somehow it had never occurred to him that she would be using that knowledge to find him.
But he supposed it made sense.
"Why do they want me there?"
The guide smiled crookedly. "Swordsman, she didn't tell me that, but she did say you might not remember right away that you were looking for the Scholar, and if so, I should remind you. Well, consider this your reminder—here's your chance to talk to him."
That was true—but if they wanted to talk to him, why hadn't they come to Dog Pole?
"But why Tumbled Sheep?"
"Because that's where they are. They didn't tell me anything; they just sent me to get you and bring you there."
"Oh." He supposed it was perfectly reasonable for the Seer and the Scholar to want to meet the new Swordsman— after all, as the guide had pointed out, he had wanted to meet them. Simple curiosity was more than adequate to explain their interest.
And thinking about other possible explanations, he very much hoped mere curiosity was the only motivation. He stared at the guide for a moment longer, then rose. "Let me get my bag."
Ten minutes later the two of them marched past a boundary shrine, out of Dog Pole, and into the southern hills.
The rolling country was not as strange as the flat plain of the Midlands, but in a way it was even more disorienting to someone from the northern valleys; none of the hills seemed to line up into ridges, but instead they thrust up here and there, apparently at random—and every hill had its own ler, of course, some of them visible as lights or mist or shadows, like the ler of Mad Oak. The guide led Breaker along a winding, circuitous route that dodged most of these, but he stopped in a few spots to placate the local spirits; in one case this required a libation from a wineskin he carried, at another he recited an elaborately worded prayer, and so on.
In short, save for the odd landscape, the journey was much like others Breaker had made in his travels, and like those others it went smoothly, and late in the afternoon, as the sun neared the western horizon, he and the guide made an uneventful arrival in the town of Tumbled Sheep, which nestled beside a river at the foot of an unusually steep hillside. Breaker supposed that the hillside was connected with the silly name somehow.
The guide paused at the boundary shrine only long enough to kneel briefly, then led Breaker to the largest building in town, a wooden structure with wide but sagging porches on every side. Breaker was unsure whether it was a public house, a community center like the pavilions in the northern valleys, or a temple to the local ler, but whatever it was, several people were sitting on the porches. They had been chatting quietly when Breaker had first glimpsed them from well beyond the boundary shrine, but someone had spotted the approaching travelers, and now every eye was focused on them, every tongue still.
A month or two before that would have made him unbearably nervous, but his travels had accustomed him to this sort of reception—it was not at all unusual. He ignored the stares as he followed the guide around to the north porch and up the two low steps.
A woman rose at his approach, a woman roughly his mother's age, but shorter and plumper, her hair gone prematurely silver-gray. She wore a white cotton tunic embroidered in red and gold, and a long green wool skirt, both worn soft with long use; her hair hung to her waist. The top of her head barely reached Breaker's chin, but she looked boldly into his eyes, clearly not intimidated by his size. Her own eyes were green and intense, her nose long and prominent; she was not smiling. She did not look as if she smiled often.
She held out a hand. "Hello, Swordsman," she said. "I'm the Seer."
Behind her a man got to his feet, a thin man of medium height with a graying beard and a cheerful grin, clad in a long vest of brown leather.
Breaker accepted the woman's hand and bowed to her. "I am honored," he said.
"Oh, nonsense. You're one of the Chosen, I'm one of the Chosen—we're equals, and there's no honor involved in meeting me."
Before Breaker could reply, the thin man held out his hand and said, "Call me Lore."
Breaker released the Seer's hand and turned to look at this other person.
He was midway between Breaker and the Seer in height, his dull brown hair pulled back in a tight braid, his face tanned but not heavily so; Breaker could not guess his age, though he was sure that it fell, like his height, somewhere between the Seer's and his own. His eyes were a soft brown, and reminded Breaker of the puppy one of the bargemen had brought along two summers back; unlike the Seer he was smiling, though his grin seemed a bit tentative.
He wore a long, many-pocketed vest over a tan blouse and brown denim pants—practical garb, appropriate for most circumstances. And his grip was surprisingly firm.
"You're the Scholar?" Breaker asked. The man's healthy color, cheerful expression, and sensible clothing hardly fit the stereotype of a man devoted to learning.
"I am. I understand you're from Mad Oak in Longvale?"
Startled, Breaker nodded.
"Is the Mad Oak still standing?"
"Yes, it is; it almost got me when I left."
"As bad as ever, then? A shame. And is Flute still in mourning?"
That was more than startling, that was astonishing. Breaker glanced at the Seer, then said, "No, he's done grieving. When I left he was courting Brewer's sister Sugar Cake."
"Lore, that can wait," the Seer interjected before the Scholar could ask any more questions. "We have more urgent concerns."
Up until then, everything they had said and done had been consistent with simple curiosity, a desire to meet their new compatriot—but "urgent concerns"? That did not sound so benign, and the Old Swordsman's words came back to him.
Breaker glanced around, and realized that at least a score of the residents of Tumbled Sheep were staring at the three Chosen. The guide who had brought him from Dog Pole was standing a few feet away, making a point of not staring.
That was hardly surprising; after all, seeing even one of the Chosen must be fairly unusual, and to have three of the eight gathered here, and to have one of those three speaking of "urgent concerns" .. .
Breaker swallowed. These people knew what the Chosen had been chosen for; they would undoubtedly be guessing what could gather three in one place, and probably guessing one thing.
Breaker hoped that obvious guess was wrong, but he remembered the Old Swordsman's suspicions. The old man might have been right—and if so, then Breaker would need to do something about it. He might have to become the killer his mother had feared he would be.
The old man had tricked him—but it didn't matter. He was here now, and he had accepted his role, regardless of whether he had been deceived about its nature.
"Should we be speaking out here in the open?" he asked.
"No," the Seer replied immediately. "Just a moment." She turned to the guide, pulled something from a pouch on her belt, and thrust it into the guide's hand. He opened his hand and counted the coins.
The Seer did not wait for the guide to total up his pay; she took both Breaker and Lore by the hand, one on either side, and led them across the po
rch and into the building.
It appeared to be a public house, or perhaps an inn; there were several tables, dozens of chairs, and a row of barrels along one wall in the main room, but the Seer led them quickly past that and down a corridor. She found the door she wanted and opened it, ushering the two men into a small room where a narrow bed stood against either wall, a night-stand at the head of each bed, a pitcher and basin on each nightstand. There were no other furnishings, but a large rucksack stood at the foot of one bed, and shutters were closed over the window, leaving the room only dimly lit.
"Sit down if you want," the Seer said, gesturing at the nearer bed. "You must be tired after the long walk."
Breaker didn't argue—he was tired, and hungry, as well. He sat and reached for the pitcher.
It held a modest amount of water; he poured it into the basin, then rinsed his hands and splashed a little on his face while the Scholar settled on the other bed and the Seer placed herself between them.
"Now," she said, "let's speak frankly."
"About what?" Breaker asked, wiping his face.
"About the Wizard Lord, of course. You're traveling around Barokan looking for information about him, aren't you? You're on your way to visit him, to see whether he might need to be removed?"
Breaker shook his hands dry, then turned to face her. "How is it," he asked, "that you two know so much about me and my home and my intentions, when I know nothing about you?"
The Seer and the Scholar exchanged glances.
"I'm the Seer" the Seer said. "I always know who and where all the eight Chosen are, and where the Wizard Lord is, and whether he's watching us. Which, I am pleased to say, he is not, just now. He's eating his supper, and not worrying about us."
"I wish / were eating supper," Breaker muttered to himself.
'They'll be serving here in half an hour," the Seer replied. "We'll eat then."
That was heartening news. "I still don't understand how you know these things," Breaker said.
The Seer gave him a look, one he had gotten from his mother on occasion, a look that clearly meant he was being stupid.
Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 Page 14
