The Ninth Talisman

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  The Wizard Lord had already turned that corner. Did that mean he had left Barokan, and his magic, behind? Or as the lord of Barokan, did he take its magic with him? Would this path, and the Summer Palace, now become a part of the Wizard Lord’s realm?

  Was that a deliberate feature of his schemes? Did he intend to expand his empire, spread his reign out across the Uplands?

  But why would he do that?

  Sword looked down at the talisman in his palm, then closed his hand around it and began walking, inserting himself into the procession between a dancing girl and one of the kitchen boys. He would find out soon enough whether Barokanese magic worked in the Uplands, he told himself, and if he didn’t get moving he would get stuck behind some of the slower traffic and have to camp out on the trail when it got too dark to climb.

  Hours later, when he was soaked in sweat from the afternoon sun, he found himself at the point where the trail turned from the cliff face into the triangular canyon; at this point the path widened considerably, at least at first. Sword paused, squeezing to one side to let the kitchen boy pass, and took out his talisman again.

  It was much harder to see any glow, now that the sun was in the west and shining directly on him; Sword twisted, trying to shelter the talisman with his body.

  It did still seem to be glowing, and he still felt the same. He put a hand on the hilt of his sword, and felt the weapon’s cold, hard ler, waiting to be drawn, as always.

  He stepped into the canyon, off the face of the cliff—and fell to his knees as ler tore at him, trying to pull him back. He almost yielded, but then he caught himself; if he let himself be dragged backward he might well be unable to stop, and find himself plunging off the path and down the cliff. He knelt, struggling, the talisman clutched before him.

  Several people made their way around him; he was only vaguely aware of their passage, and saw them only as moving legs and battered boots. He heard murmurs, but paid no attention as he focused all his attention inward.

  “Are you all right, sir?”

  Sword looked up at a dirty face wearing a worried expression. The kitchen boy who had been behind him on the path for so long had glanced back, seen him fall, and stopped, stepping out of the procession. Now the lad, who couldn’t be much older than twelve, was standing over him, clearly concerned.

  “I’m not sure,” Sword replied. “Don’t worry about me, though. I can handle it myself. Though I thank you for your kindness, and bless the ler of your house.”

  “You’re certain?” The boy hesitated.

  “Certain enough. Go on; get to the palace before dark. You don’t want to camp out on the trail.” Sword managed to gesture awkwardly with one hand, while still holding the talisman in the other.

  The boy did not appear entirely convinced, but after another look around he turned and scampered back into line, several places behind his old position, though that did not matter as much in this stretch, where the canyon was wide enough for half a dozen to walk abreast.

  Sword stayed where he was, kneeling on the stone, as he tried to understand just what was happening. He could feel his hands opening and closing, though he was not trying to move them; he could feel muscles in his arms and legs and shoulders and hips trying to flex, to force him to move.

  The ler of muscle were at work here, plainly—and he knew that the ler of muscle were bound to him, as the Chosen Swordsman, through his talisman.

  Clearly, the Chosen were not meant to leave Barokan, and whatever the Wizard Lord might think, Barokan ended here, at the foot of this triangular valley.

  But the Wizard Lord had gone on ahead, as had Lore.

  Sword looked up the canyon, at the lines of people and carts and bundles, then down at the talisman. Perhaps it was only he who was not meant to leave Barokan.

  But that made no sense; he had to be able to go wherever the Wizard Lord went.

  The Wizard Lord had said he wanted to use as little magic as possible, but surely he would not have given up his magic? The Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills had said he would rather die than surrender it.

  But the Red Wizard, the Lord of Winterhome, was not the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills; if anything, he seemed to be making a deliberate effort to be the Dark Lord’s opposite.

  Perhaps he really had left Barokan, and his magic, behind, in order to live in his Summer Palace. Or perhaps the palace was somehow a part of Barokan now, even though this canyon was not.

  Sword looked at the talisman in his hand and said, “Hear me, O ler. I am Erren Zal Tuyo, the Chosen Swordsman, and yes, I am leaving Barokan and your power behind, but I do so in pursuit of my duty. I swear by my name and my soul that I will return to Barokan and resume my role and my magic when I am satisfied that my duty is done. Will you let me go?”

  The world seemed to flicker and swirl for a moment; he felt his muscles spasm, and his hand closed so tightly on the silver talisman that its points dug into his flesh, drawing blood. He tried to open his fist and found he could not; instead he squeezed even harder, and blood seeped from beneath his fingers. He watched helplessly as it dripped onto the stone of the path.

  And then suddenly he was free; his hand sprang open, and the talisman would have been flung away if its point had not been dug into his flesh. He snatched it out with his other hand and thrust it in his pocket, then groped for something to use as a bandage.

  And as he did he felt the world change around him. The light seemed to dim, the stone around him went dead, the air lost its richness, the smells it had carried suddenly faded. He was no longer a part of his surroundings, but instead a self-contained being, detached and alone and empty.

  The ler had released him.

  He had forgotten what the world felt like without his magic; he was suddenly awkward and uncertain.

  But he was also free to continue on up the valley to the Uplands, and he hurried to do so.

  Now that he was in the canyon there were rocky slopes rising on either side, rather than a sheer wall on one side and a steep drop on the other, and the sky had narrowed to a long triangle of blue overhead. The path, on the other hand, had widened, but he could see that it narrowed again ahead, so he hastened to find a place in the ongoing procession, this time putting himself between a guardsman and a cartload of bedding.

  He almost collided with them, and attempts to adjust required more thought and effort than he expected. He realized that for years now he had had a supernatural awareness of his surroundings and heightened reflexes, and that when he had paid his way across the border from Barokan with his blood, he had also given these up. Now he could stumble not because of hostile ler underfoot, but simply because he wasn’t watching where he put his feet.

  And in fact, he realized that he could no longer sense any ler at all. He asked the guard about it, and had his suspicions confirmed—the land here felt lerless and dead to everyone from Barokan, not just to him.

  He could deal with that; he had been in dead places before. The loss of his own guiding spirits was far more dismaying. He trudged on for hours, marching into the wind that poured down the valley, trying to adjust to his new status, and feeling ever more tired and weak.

  He had not thought that so much of his strength came from his magic. He wondered how much of his skill with a blade remained; he had trained and practiced for years now, an hour every single day, so surely he would retain some of his swordsmanship even without any of his magic.

  The sun was low in the west, casting long shadows up the path in front of him, when Sword finally neared the top of the canyon. The walls on either side were shrinking, the path rising steeply and narrowing, the sky widening. He could see that much of the party had emerged onto the plateau; he could see some of them staring east in amazement, could see their hair and clothes whipping in the wind, could hear them calling to one another in astonishment, though he could not make out their words.

  Others appeared to have collapsed in exhaustion, and now sat or lay by the trail, catching their breath. Sword re
alized his own breath was coming in pants and gasps, too. It was not so much that he felt terribly weary as that he seemed unable to take a good, deep breath. He looked around, and saw that many of the walkers around him were wheezing, yawning, and otherwise struggling to breathe.

  It was not just his lost magic making him weak and breathless; something was wrong with the air itself, he realized.

  He had heard that the air was different up on the plateau, but his imagination had never quite matched the reality. Perhaps this was why the Uplanders weren’t worried about yielding territory—the air itself guarded them from invasion, its ler refusing to properly sustain Barokanese lungs. Although his magic had certainly let him know when they crossed the border, they had passed no boundary shrines, no man-made markers, to tell them when they had reached the Uplands and become intruders; still, anyone would know by now that this was clearly not Barokan.

  And as for the lack of a marker, why would Barokan’s customs apply up here? Who would have built such a shrine? There was no need to mark the border, and no one to mark it.

  The air in the lower part of the canyon had not seemed as difficult to breathe; perhaps that part of the path was neither Upland nor Barokan, but something between. Perhaps this, then, was where they truly entered the Uplands.

  And if so, it was only right to acknowledge it. Sword bowed his head, did his best to take a deep breath, and said, “Ler of the Uplands, we ask your pardon for any affronts we may have committed against you; we are ignorant of your ways and mean no harm nor disrespect. We pray you let us enter into your realm, and breathe freely here.”

  Several people nearby heard him, and emulated him; a mumble of prayer and beseeching filled the valley.

  Some people, he had noticed, didn’t seem to have had any problem in the first place; others were gasping like dying fish, trying to fill their lungs with air that seemed unwilling to cooperate. Sword had no idea why there would be such variation; did some of them have a trace of Uplander blood, perhaps? Had some somehow offended the ler of the plateau’s air?

  For himself, he seemed to be breathing a little more easily again; he shook himself and moved on, up the valley.

  And then his head cleared the level of the plain, and he stopped in his tracks as the wind blew his hair awry. Someone prodded him from behind and he began walking again, but he stared ahead at the plateau.

  Even to his dulled senses and deadened sensitivity, the sight was overwhelming. The plains stretched out before him as far as he could see; with each step lifting him higher, he saw what seemed to be miles farther. There were no hills, no houses, anywhere between the valley and the eastern horizon; the land stretched out to east and north and south for what seemed to be forever, utterly flat, far flatter than the Midlands of Barokan that he had previously thought to be as level as land could be. Mile upon mile of green grass, shining in the late-afternoon sun, lay beneath a limitless, cloudless blue sky that seemed vastly larger than the sky of Barokan.

  A cool, brisk breeze was blowing from the east, whipping his sleeves and hair, though in his present condition it felt oddly lifeless.

  A few strange trees were widely scattered in the distance, each standing isolated and alone; there were no groves, no forests. Far off in the distance to the southeast he could see a flock of birds running across the grass, birds with stubby, undersized wings that could not possibly support them in flight. At first he could not make himself interpret what he saw, as the infinite emptiness provided few clues to scale, but at last he was able to adjust his perceptions and see that those birds, with their absurd little white wings and their long white tails and curling pink crests, were each as tall as a man, perhaps taller.

  Those were ara, obviously. He had never seen an ara before, but he had heard descriptions and seen crude drawings and handled their feathers, and those distant birds could be nothing else. Ara feathers and bones and beaks were valuable property down in Barokan; they could be had only by purchasing from Uplanders, since the giant birds could not survive anywhere but the plateau. The birds were famously immune to magic, their feathers shielding them against it, and it was generally believed that meant hunting them would be difficult, since they could not be magically coaxed into giving themselves up to the hunters. It was assumed that the Uplanders were brave and clever, to catch such creatures.

  But there were hundreds of them in that flock, perhaps thousands! Out in plain sight, for there was nowhere to hide on the highland plateau, no cover, no shelter, just a flat, open surface extending forever in every direction but west.

  No wonder the Uplanders always had feathers to sell when they came down to Winterhome. And no wonder they didn’t mind giving up a few acres for the Wizard Lord’s palace, when they had so vast a space!

  There were no Uplanders in sight anywhere, though there were a few odd squarish structures off in the distance, too far away for Sword to make out their function; presumably the nomads were all somewhere beyond that distant horizon.

  That meant the plateau was even more vast than it appeared.

  Sword had never imagined anything like this. He had pictured a much smaller plateau—though now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure what he had thought would limit it.

  The line of travelers was turning left, heading north, toward the Summer Palace, and the plain appeared as infinite in that direction as it had in the east. It was only in the west that it did not seem to stretch out forever, and there it just stopped, a few miles away. Beyond the cliffs Sword saw only sky; all of Barokan and the seas beyond lay below his line of sight.

  The Summer Palace stood near the cliff’s edge to the northwest of them, still a few miles away. Despite the distance he could see it far more clearly here than he had from below—three stories of stone walls and red-painted eaves, with broad verandahs and balconies on all sides. The line of climbers stretched in scattered clumps from the head of the canyon through the gates; Sword saw no sign of the Wizard Lord and Lore and Farash, who were presumably already inside.

  “It’s the thinner air,” someone said, and Sword turned to see a guard supporting a wheezing old man. “You’ll get used to it in a day or two.”

  “Thinner? Thinner how?” someone asked. “What does ‘thinner’ mean when you’re talking about air? It’s already invisible and almost nothing; how can it be thinner?”

  “There’s just less of it up here,” the guard explained. “I don’t know why; maybe the air ler don’t like it here. Whatever causes it, there isn’t as much air as there is down in Barokan. There’s enough to breathe, but your body isn’t used to working so hard to get it.”

  “Why is it worse for some people than others?”

  The guard shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Ask an Uplander priest, if you can find one.”

  Less air? Sword marveled at the concept; he had never imagined such a thing. He looked around once again, taking in the vast plain and infinite sky, and wondered whether the lack of air might make it all look larger, somehow. Could it really be as endless as it appeared?

  It didn’t look distorted; it merely looked vast. He decided the air had nothing to do with it.

  He marched on, at as brisk a pace as he could manage, aware with every step of his own breathing.

  [ 10 ]

  An hour and a half after he emerged from the canyon Sword walked through the lantern-hung gate of the Summer Palace and looked around, marveling at the wonder the Wizard Lord had created. Cooling fountains bubbled on either side of the grand entrance; trellises were arranged to provide shade for the courtyard beyond, though as yet the vines intended to adorn them had not grown up to any useful size. Ornamental stone planters still held as much bare dirt as greenery.

  Even in the scattered light of lanterns and torches, with the gardens and planters still raw and with dozens of people bustling about, it was lovely. Whether he had any right to do so or not, the Wizard Lord had made something very beautiful. Sword wished he could still sense the spiritual world, as well a
s the physical, so that he might appreciate it more fully.

  The line of new arrivals was fairly thin by this time but still trickling in, to be met inside the gates by a steward who directed each person to the appropriate entrance to the palace itself. Sword was a guest, with no particular assigned duties in the palace, nothing he was required to do nor anywhere he had to be, so when he introduced himself to the steward he was greeted with a shrug. “I am told you are to do as you please,” the steward said.

  “Thank you,” Sword replied. He stepped aside and watched the steward direct the next few servants around to an eastern entrance, but then turned away. No one paid any attention to him as he wandered from the entry plaza along a verandah to the left; he followed that past an elegant arcade and through an arch, and emerged onto a terrace at the western end of the complex.

  And here he found himself looking at something that made his first view of the high plains seem like nothing. The western terrace was built right out over the edge of the great cliff, and from its rail Sword found himself looking out over all of Barokan.

  It took him a moment to adjust; initially it seemed a sea of dark blues and greens, like a rolling lawn beneath the last glow of a long summer sunset. Then he grasped the scale, and had to hold the terrace rail to steady himself.

  Those little patches of red and brown and white, catching the last pink and orange glimmers of the twilight, were towns. The gentle mounds were the hills and ridges. That flat area ahead and to his left, crisscrossed with roads and covered in dark fields, was the Midlands; to his right were the vales, the long valleys paralleling the cliffs. Far to the left were the southern hills.

  He could see the vales and the hills, even though they were separated by fifty miles or more of the Midlands.

  If he leaned out over the railing, ignoring his vertigo, and looked down and down and down and slightly to his left, he could see Winterhome, with the Winter Palace tucked almost out of sight beneath the cliff, and the five main roads radiating out, the guesthouses lined up like blocks in some child’s game, all of it shadowy, but speckled here and there with the orange glow of fires and torches and lanterns. To the right was Shadowvale, and beyond that Longvale, and he peered out into it, trying to match what he saw with what he knew of the geography. Ordinarily he could have sensed something of the essence of what he saw, felt a little of the ler, but that was gone while he remained outside Barokan, and he had to rely on nothing but vision and knowledge.