“I am delighted to meet the famed White Rose,” Snatcher said, in an unctuous tone completely unlike either the pompous messenger or the quiet young man he had been heretofore; Sword saw that the little man had straightened himself up, thrown back his shoulders, and adopted an entirely different stance. “I am Desrem dik Taborin of Spilled Basket, come to fetch your honored son to aid us.”
White Rose cast a sideways glance at Sword, but before either of them could speak the Thief continued, “We have a problem with bandits, you see—a problem beneath the notice of the Wizard Lord himself, busy as he is with other matters in his home in the Summer Palace, and we thought the Chosen Swordsman might be able to help us.”
“Oh,” White Rose said. She looked questioningly at Sword.
Sword had not intended to lie, but he could see why the Thief might want to. Any mention that the Chosen were gathering was likely to stir up rumors about the Wizard Lord, and at this point it was probably better not to do that. Artil was quite a hero here; the road from Greenwater had been cut through, up by the charred stump of the Mad Oak, just a month before, bringing a whole new wave of traders and travelers.
He still did not want to tell any actual falsehoods, but it was easy enough to tell the truth while still giving the impression the Thief’s explanation was correct. “I thought holing up in the Summer Palace might cause problems,” Sword said. “Anyway, this messenger came to fetch me and I’ve agreed to go. I offered them the loft bed here; it’s a little more comfortable than the pavilion floor.”
“Oh,” his mother said again. “And who is this? Your wife?” She looked from the Seer to the Thief and back.
“A friend,” Snatcher replied. “She knew the way better than I did, and agreed to guide me.”
“She did?” White Rose frowned. “But I’ve never seen her in Mad Oak before.”
“I’ve never been here,” the Seer said quietly. “But I’ve studied maps.”
“Really?” The frown vanished. “I’ve never seen a map. I’ve heard about them—they’re like pictures, but of entire towns?”
“Sort of,” the Seer answered uneasily.
“Are you from Spilled Basket, too?”
The Seer didn’t reply; instead she threw the Thief a quick glance, and he stepped up. “Yes, she is,” he said. “Of course.”
“That’s a long way.”
“Yes, it is.”
She turned to her son. “Then will you be gone long?”
“I really don’t know, Mother,” he said. “I hope it won’t be too long.”
“And you won’t kill anyone?”
“I don’t know, Mother. I certainly hope not.” Killing Artil would make him a pariah, he knew. Killing anyone else would be a crime.
“And this doesn’t have anything to do with the Wizard Lord, or his lovely roads?”
“Mother, I promise, I have no intention of going up the cliff to the Summer Palace to harass the Wizard Lord. I’m just doing what this man’s asked me to.”
“Well, all right, then. Be careful.”
“I will.” He turned to his guests. “This way,” he said.
The rarely used loft room was reached by a ladder through a trapdoor; Sword climbed up enough to open the trap and set a candle on the floor by the opening, then descended and gestured for the others to climb.
The Thief hesitated with one foot on the ladder. “I’d like a word with you about our plans,” he said.
“I’ll be right up, then,” Sword assured him.
He watched as the two visitors climbed, and then followed them.
A moment later the three sat around the trapdoor, and Sword asked, “What did you need to say that couldn’t wait until morning?”
“I wanted to make sure we understand each other,” Snatcher said quietly, as he closed the trap. “I lied to your mother just now, and you knew it and didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t want to worry her,” Sword said. “I understand that.”
“I didn’t want her to try to stop us,” Snatcher said. “Whether she worries or not—well, I see no reason to make anyone needlessly unhappy, but I don’t go out of my way to avoid upsetting strangers. But right now, I doubt your mother would want to hear that the Chosen are gathering.”
Sword knew exactly what the Thief meant. The Chosen gathered for only one reason. “Not everyone is enamored of the changes the current Wizard Lord has made,” he said, though he was no longer sure this was true.
“But most people are. And even those who aren’t know that most of their neighbors prefer the new Barokan to the old. Your mother would probably not be pleased to know you might be called upon to kill the Lord of Winterhome. Whatever she thinks of him herself, she must know it would make you a very unpopular man.”
“So you didn’t want to worry her,” Sword repeated. “And you probably didn’t want to risk the possibility that word might somehow get back to the Wizard Lord that the Chosen are gathering, either.”
Snatcher smiled crookedly. “Ah, you do understand!” He opened his leather vest to display half a dozen ara feathers, sewn into the garment’s lining. “It’s very convenient that so many travelers still carry these to ward off hostile ler,” he said. “It means we can wear them without arousing the Wizard Lord’s suspicions.”
“Oh, he’s probably suspicious,” Sword said. “But he can’t really do anything about it.” He glanced at the Seer to see if she was going to display her protective feathers as well, but she made no move to do so. Sword supposed they were under her generous skirts.
“So you think he knows we’re up to something?”
“He might, yes.”
“But you still intend to come with us to Winterhome to meet Boss?”
“Yes. I agreed to be the Chosen Swordsman; I think that means that when the Leader of the Chosen summons me, I should at least see what she wants.”
“And if she does want this Wizard Lord dead?”
“I’ll listen to her reasons, and if I find them unconvincing I will try my best to talk her out of it. And I may need a great deal of convincing.”
“Fair enough; I’m not in any hurry to become widely loathed, either. Incidentally, my true name is not Desrem dik Taborin of Spilled Basket; rather, it’s Taborin dik Desrem, and I was born and raised in Bayshead on the Soreen Coast, where I was called Ferret. Let us have no lies between us.”
Sword nodded. “In that case,” he said, “tell me, did you ever really doubt I was the Swordsman?”
Snatcher grinned. “Not seriously, no. I wanted to get your measure, though.”
“And did you?”
“Well enough, I think. You didn’t just chase me away, and you didn’t try to kill me. That little show with the beanpole was quite impressive.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” Sword said. He glanced at the Seer, who had not said a word since mounting the ladder. “Do you have anything to say about any of this?” he asked.
She shook her head.
Sword stared at her.
“There will be time on the road,” she whispered at last.
Sword snorted. “You certainly aren’t much like the last Seer,” he said. “She talked far more. Did she tell you, when she passed on her role, why she was retiring?”
“She was a coward,” the Seer whispered. “She would not enter the Dark Lord’s tower with you, even though she had been the one who started the campaign against him.”
“She did tell you, then.”
“Yes.”
“And did she think you would do better? You, who didn’t dare meet me?”
“I will do better,” the Seer said, no longer whispering. She raised her eyes to meet Sword’s gaze.
“Can you be sure of that?” Sword asked gently.
“Yes,” the Seer said flatly. Her eyes did not waver; she stared directly at him.
Sword stared back at her. “Oh?”
“Yes,” the Seer repeated.
“Sword,” the Thief interjected, “I would n
ot argue with her.”
“Oh?” Sword turned his attention to Snatcher. “If you will forgive me, she seems a frail and timid little thing, unsuited to a role among the Chosen. Why do you have such faith in her courage?”
“She’s from Bone Garden,” Snatcher said.
Sword’s gaze leapt back to the Seer.
“Her manner isn’t timidity, exactly,” the Thief explained. “She was taught to be quiet and deferential from infancy, and it’s a habit now, but it’s not really fear—just habit.”
“Bone Garden?” Sword asked.
Ever since he first began traveling in Barokan, Sword had heard tales of the hideous things that were done in Bone Garden—or more often, not so much heard tales as heard hints and implications. Even in the very few towns he had visited that practiced human sacrifice, such as Redfield, where an innocent child was ritually murdered every spring and his or her blood spread on the fields to appease the ler, the customs of Bone Garden were spoken of with disgust and horror.
“Bone Garden,” the Seer said. “I can show you the scars, if you like. I not only survived there, against the express wishes of the priests, I escaped. Do you still want to question my courage?”
“No,” Sword said. “But . . . the stories. . . .” He glanced at the Thief. “The stories I’ve heard about Bone Garden . . . are they true?”
“I don’t know what stories you’ve heard,” Snatcher said.
Sword grimaced, unsure where to begin. Before he could say more, though, the Seer looked up and spoke again, in a low, flat voice.
“My mother was called Breeder,” she said. “But that was no real distinction; so were a few dozen other women, including some of my sisters—or half-sisters, of course none of us knew who had fathered us. We weren’t permitted to know our true names. Generally, if one of the priests wanted one of us, he wouldn’t bother with a name; he would just point or beckon.”
“Oh,” Sword said.
“It’s getting late,” the Thief interrupted. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk on the way to Winterhome.”
“Is that the sort of story you meant?” the Seer asked, staring into Sword’s eyes.
“Yes,” Sword said. “I’m sorry.”
The Seer did not answer; she simply continued to stare at him.
The Thief, too, fell silent.
After a long, awkward moment, Sword said, “I’ll be downstairs, then. I’ll see you in the morning.” He turned and lifted the trap.
The other two sat, silent and motionless, and watched him clamber back down the ladder. His head had scarcely cleared the opening when the trap was lowered back into place. At the foot of the ladder he stood and looked upward for a moment at that closed door.
These two were very different from any of the other Chosen he had known. They were the first to be younger than he was himself, and that really did affect how he perceived them; he was accustomed to thinking of himself as the brash young upstart of the group, but those two made him feel old and stodgy.
He wondered how Merrilin tarak Dolin had found this new Thief, and how the old Seer, Shal Doro Sheth tava Doro, had ever ventured to Bone Garden for her replacement. She had been too frightened to set foot in the tower in the Galbek Hills, yet she had gone to the most feared community in all Barokan to find her successor? Maybe she had been trying to prove something to someone—herself, perhaps. Maybe she had wanted to show that she was not a complete coward.
He would ask the new Seer about it at some point. As she said, they would have time on the road.
That reminded him of the brief bit of description the girl had given when he asked her about Bone Garden. She hadn’t said anything about herself, really, only about her mother and her poor nameless sisters, all treated as interchangeable baby makers. Some of the lurid stories he had heard had touched on that. The priesthood of Bone Garden was said to treat the rest of the population as slaves, using them as their playthings, or as beasts of burden. The ler reportedly demanded payment of blood or flesh for every crop, for every bit of cooperation between humanity and nature; they did not recognize anyone but the priests as worthy of even the most basic consideration. Rumor had it there were no families in Bone Garden, not as the word was understood anywhere else; even the priests were not permitted that sort of connection with their fellows. Supposedly the town’s boundaries were marked out not with shrines of stone or wood, but with a fence made of human bones, a fence that grew higher every year. That was said to be where the town’s name came from.
Who could live like that?
And how could someone from such a place have become the Seer?
And why hadn’t someone done something about the existence of such a town? If the Wizard Lord was burning killer trees and slaughtering monster boars, perhaps he should take the time to do something about Bone Garden—and perhaps Redfield and Drumhead, while he was at it. If he really wanted to make Barokan a better place, those towns would need to change.
How had someone from Bone Garden become one of the Chosen? It didn’t seem as if the priests there would have allowed it.
Well, he would have plenty of time to ask the Seer about it on the way to Winterhome. He turned away from the ladder and headed to bed.
[ 15 ]
The three set out on the road from Mad Oak to Willowbank without incident, and conversation was limited to casual chatter about supplies and weather and the like until they were well along the way. Sword and Snatcher did most of the talking; the Seer preferred to walk silently a step or two behind the two men.
Once the sun had topped the Eastern Cliffs golden sunlight dappled the road ahead, and a gentle breeze rustled the leaves overhead. Every so often a merchant’s wagon would come creaking northward, and they would wave polite greetings as it passed, but mostly they had the road to themselves, and simply walked along enjoying the day.
After a time, though, Sword asked, “How did you become the Thief? Merrilin tarak Dolin lived near Quince Market, in the eastern Midlands, not out on the Soreen Coast.”
“And did the old Swordsman live in Mad Oak, or anywhere in Longvale?” Snatcher asked.
“No,” Sword admitted. “He was from Dazet Saltmarsh. He and a couple of wizards found me.”
“And the old Thief found me in, I suppose, much the same fashion, though in her case she was traveling with her husband and two children as well as two wizards.”
“All the way out on the Soreen Coast?”
The Thief brushed away a butterfly that had wandered near his face. “Well, no,” he said. “They found me at an inn in Crooktree, actually. I left Bayshead when I was fourteen, a few months after my mother died. My aunt had taken me in, but her heart wasn’t in it, and I decided to save her the trouble of looking after me. I packed up a few things and paid the guide to take me to Greycliff, then made my way from there.”
“You’re an orphan?”
“For almost ten years now.” A squirrel scampered through the undergrowth beside the road, and Snatcher idly tossed a pebble at it.
“And you . . . where do you live, then?” Sword asked. “Bayshead or Greycliff or Crooktree?”
Snatcher shrugged. “None of them, really. I travel around. It’s much easier now, with the new roads.”
“But how do you support yourself?”
Snatcher grimaced. “Plague, man, I’m the world’s greatest thief! How do you think I support myself?”
“But . . . oh.”
“I was a thief even before I was Chosen, you know. That was why I was chosen. The old Thief hated her role, so she sought someone for whom it wouldn’t be a problem.” He smiled. “It isn’t a problem for me, I assure you.”
“But that’s . . . that’s wrong, stealing for a living!”
Snatcher shrugged again. “I’m sure it is. I didn’t have much of a choice at first, though—stealing or begging were about the only options once I left Bayshead, and I decided that if I was going to take other people’s money and food and other belongings, I’d rather
take them from the stingy than from the generous, so I preferred stealing to begging. Now that I have magic, as well as my native skills, I can be very particular about what I take from whom, and I assure you, I never rob the needy, and I try not to be unkind to the kindly. A coin here, a loaf of bread there, from the rude or greedy, and I appease the ler of my talisman, keep my belly filled, and satisfy my own sense of justice.”
“But it’s still not . . . not right.”
Snatcher shrugged. “Was it right for my father, whoever he was, to abandon my mother, and for my mother to die young?” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “Is it right that Bone Garden exists, and no one does anything to change it?”
Sword frowned.
“The world is full of things that aren’t right,” the Thief continued. “The ler aren’t concerned with what’s right and fair, only with following their nature, and we who live among them must accept that.”
“I know,” Sword said, with a glance back at the Seer. “I know.”
With that, the conversation trailed off to nothing.
Later, though, when a northbound wagon loaded with bright fabrics had rolled past and reminded him, Sword asked, “Why did you wear that ridiculous cloak when you came to find me?”
“I had to ask your townsfolk where I might find you,” Snatcher explained. “Seer was exhausted and needed to rest, and I didn’t want to wait for her to recover. The two of us traveling together wouldn’t interest anyone, but someone asking for the Chosen Swordsman might, so I dressed up a little. I knew that way no one would remember my face, or anything about me but the cloak and the officious manner. No one would ever think of that absurd, self-important messenger as the Chosen Thief.” He shrugged. “I use disguises fairly often, in my line of work. When we reach Winterhome I’ll be in Host People black.”
“No one would know you, you thought, including me,” Sword suggested.
“True enough. As I said last night, I wanted to get a look at you before you knew who I was.” He rubbed his throat, remembering. “That was quite a display of swordsmanship.”
Sword did not bother to reply to that.
The Ninth Talisman Page 18
