Bits of leaf fluttered about those side-mounds in ways that had nothing to do with the faint breeze that found its way through the birches, and little glimmers of light and color moved through them where no sunlight could reach; the ler of the plants and other things that had been cleared away were obviously still active, and struggling to respond to the disruption of their home.
The road itself, though, seemed clear and untroubled. Sword pointed at it. "That goes all the way to Willowbank?"
"Indeed it does," said the man who had first told him he faced a road crew, glancing proudly back over his shoulder. "Oh, it's not all as straight as that, as we had to route it around the bogs, but it's a good road. And before that we cut a road from Rock Bridge to Willowbank, and from Broad-pool to Rock Bridge."
"You did?"
"We did. And if the other crews have done their jobs, you can now walk from here all the way to Winterhome without a guide, so long as you stay on the road and wear a few feathers."
That was more than Sword could comprehend all at once. "Winterhome?"
"Winterhome. That's where the Wizard Lord lives, after all."
Sword nodded. "Of course," he agreed.
He had heard that the current Wizard Lord had chosen Winterhome as his home. He had vaguely wondered why, since he knew the Wizard Lord was not a native of Winter-home, but he had not pursued the matter. After all, a Wizard Lord could live anywhere in Barokan that he chose; if the current one wanted to live at the foot of the Eastern Cliffs, in the town where the Uplanders wintered, that was his business, and none of Sword's concern.
But Winterhome had to be a hundred miles away. Could there really be a highway all the way there, through all that wilderness? He stared at the road.
After a moment's awkward silence, the apparent crew chief turned and called, "All right, now, we have work to do! We want this cut through to Mad Oak while it's still light— with luck we'll dance with the girls in the town's pavilion tonight!"
A murmur of agreement sounded. The men lifted their tools and resumed hacking at the underbrush, extending their road through the birch grove.
Sword shifted his gaze from the road vanishing into the forest to the hands swinging machetes and hoes. He stared for a moment, then turned without another word and headed back to town.
This was all strange and new, and he had no idea how to react to it, but it did not seem to call for hostility. The road crew was not breaking any laws, so far as he knew. It was not customary to disturb all those wild ler, but there was no formal stricture forbidding it. As long as the men stopped at the boundary shrine, and did nothing to upset the town's own ler, there was no obvious reason to interfere.
Besides, Sword had no real authority in Mad Oak; he wasn't a priest. He would go back and let the rest of the town decide what to do.
As he neared the boundary he could see a score of his townsfolk waiting for him just beyond the shrine—not just those who had been there before, but more. Elder and Younger Priestess had joined the party, and looked unhappy; the sigils of office on their foreheads seemed to be pulsing and glowing red, rather than their usual pale and steady gold. Sword waved to them to indicate that all was well, but he was not actually sure that was true.
"What's happening?" Younger Priestess called. "The ler are upset!"
"They're building a road," Sword called back. "All the way to ... to Willowbank."
The priestesses exchanged glances; then Elder called, "They're doing what?"
"Building a road," Sword repeated, though he was close enough to the border now that he no longer needed to shout. "They're clearing a path through the wilderness, so we won't need guides anymore."
"Can they do that? What about all the ler?" Younger Priestess asked. Her hand reached up to rub at her forehead.
Sword shrugged. "The men don't appear to be having any real problems. A few cuts and scratches. They're wearing protective clothing and carrying ara feathers."
"They are disturbing the ler, though," Elder said. "Many, many ler. We can hear them."
"And feel them," Younger added.
Sword glanced over his shoulder at the flashing machetes and thumping shovels. "They don't seem to care."
"Well, they don't need to live here!" Younger exclaimed. "Those are our ler..."
"No," Elder said thoughtfully. "They aren't." She looked at Sword. "They'll stop at the border?"
"I assume so. One of them said something about dancing in our pavilion tonight. I don't think they mean us any harm, nor anything in Mad Oak."
"They're disrupting many spirits, though—earth and leaf and tree. And those won't just quietly vanish."
The light and movement in those mounds alongside the road had told Sword as much. "What will they do?" he asked, genuinely curious. "I've never heard of anything like this."
The priestess frowned. "Well, they'll dissipate eventually— a ler like that without a home, without a solid object to bind it to our world, fades away in time."
"Not all ler are tied to objects, though," Sword protested, looking down at the sword in his hand.
"The ler of the land are," Elder said. "Any ler a priest can deal with is. The so-called higher ler, the abstract ler, they're the domain of wizards, not priests, and I doubt they're being disturbed by this. These men aren't defying wind or fire or strength or warmth or any of those, they're uprooting branch and stalk, and turning earth."
"So the disturbed ler will dissipate ..."
"Eventually. But until then they'll strike out in any way they can. They'll form into misshapen ghosts to strike at their attackers, they'll look for things they can possess, new homes they can claim."
"But the men are protected," Sword said. "They're wearing ara feathers, and good sturdy clothes."
"Then they may be safe enough, but I won't walk that road they're building any time soon. And I think we may want to keep a close watch on the livestock and the children for the next few days, and be wary of bad dreams." She looked Sword in the eye. "Did they say who began this? Whose idea it was, to battle the natural order in this way?"
"The Wizard Lord," Sword said. "The Lord of Winter-home."
"Ah," Elder said. For a moment no one spoke, then she added, "Do you think you may need to kill him?"
The question was not as bizarre as it might seem, and Sword took it very seriously. The Wizard Lord was selected by the other wizards of Barokan, the so-called Council of Immortals, to rule over all the land from the Eastern Cliffs to the Western Isles, and was given great magical power to do so. The Wizard Lord controlled the weather, and had power over wind and fire, over disease, and over many of the beasts of the wilderness. He was empowered to serve as judge and executioner of any wizard who misbehaved, and any criminal who fled from the towns into the wild.
And as a check on the dangers of such great power, eight ordinary people were chosen to take up special roles and receive limited magical powers of their own, and it was the duty of these eight to remove any Wizard Lord who proved himself unfit for his high office.
Sword, the Swordsman, was one of the Chosen. The silver talisman he always carried in his pocket bound him to the ler of muscle and steel and ensured that he was the world's greatest swordsman, unbeatable in single combat. In the past, when Wizard Lords had gone bad, it was usually the Swordsmen of the time who eventually slew them.
This particular Swordsman had thought the job was ceremonial when he first accepted it, as more than a century had passed without any known misbehavior by a Wizard Lord, but that long streak of good fortune had already been broken once. Several years ago Sword had struck down the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills with a single blow to the heart.
But that Wizard Lord had slaughtered a village; this one was merely building roads. How could building roads be a crime punishable by death? Yes, it disturbed the natural order, but who did it really harm?
And if the Wizard Lord had not gone mad, and was not harming anyone, nor trying to exceed the powers allotted him, then he was n
ot a Dark Lord and did not need to be removed. The Chosen were not responsible for maintaining order, but only for ridding Barokan of Dark Lords.
Elder was waiting for a reply.
"I hope not," Sword said. "I very much hope not."
Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 Page 38
