“And you figured out who we were more quickly than I expected,” Snatcher continued a few steps later. “Bow didn’t recognize us at all until we told him.”
That did not particularly surprise Sword, but again, he did not answer, and the conversation died.
They arrived in Willowbank around midday, where they paid their respects to the Priest-King. That was a quick and perfunctory event, very different, Sword thought, from the excitement when he had first visited the town, shortly after the road had first opened. The steady flow of trade and travelers had removed all novelty from any new arrivals, even the Chosen Swordsman.
The other two did not admit their identities; Snatcher once again claimed to be a messenger from Spilled Basket, and the Seer refused to identify herself at all.
Before the road opened, a stranger who gave no name and stated no purpose would have been viewed with extreme suspicion, but now no one seemed to care; the Priest-King simply shrugged and ignored her.
After the presentation they bought a good lunch from the traders in the town square, and then headed on to Rock Bridge. In the old days, with a guide leading them by a roundabout route through the wilderness, dodging hostile ler, the journey from Mad Oak to Willowbank would have been a full day’s effort for anyone, but now it was no great feat to make the additional trip to Rock Bridge.
There, however, they stayed the night. The Council of Priests had had a large hostel built to cope with the sudden increase in visitors, and even with the several merchants in town there were plenty of beds for the three of them.
Beds, but not rooms. “We don’t want to discourage anyone from opening a proper inn, or ordinary people from renting out rooms,” a young priestess explained. “If you want privacy, you’ll have to pay for it. But we didn’t want anyone sleeping in the market, either.”
“Do we want privacy?” Sword asked, looking at the others.
“I have no coin to pay for it,” Snatcher said with a shrug. “If you do . . .”
Sword turned to the Seer. “And you?” He caught himself before calling her “Seer,” and realized he had no other name for her.
“I don’t care,” she murmured.
“Then we’ll save our money,” Sword said. “Thank you, priestess.”
Later, as the three of them were walking in the twilight, Sword asked the Seer, “What should I call you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Anything you like.”
He glanced at the Thief. “What do you call her, when you aren’t admitting she’s the Seer?”
“Oh, whatever whim strikes me,” he said. “Pudding, or Fumble, or Prettyfoot, or Skinny, or Silence. Or I make up a bit that sounds like a true name—Dinzil or Kuri or something.”
Sword grimaced at the idea of calling the Seer skinny; she wasn’t. “You don’t know any of her true name?”
“She doesn’t know any of her true name,” the Thief pointed out. “You haven’t met Babble?”
Startled, the Seer looked up at him as the Thief replied, “No. Why? What does that have to do with her name?”
“Babble calls everyone by true name,” Sword explained. “I don’t think she can help it; ler are constantly barraging her with true names. When she meets someone his soul announces his true name to her before he can speak aloud, and repeats it frequently, so she finds true names much easier to remember than what we call ourselves.”
“So she can tell me my name?” the Seer said, suddenly intent.
“Oh, yes. Of course. But wait—when you became the Seer, didn’t the wizard who bound you to the talisman use your true name?”
“She may have,” the Seer said. “I don’t remember. The shock—the whole world changed when I became the Seer. Everything I see and feel, everything I know—I don’t remember much from the transition. I must have heard my true name, but . . . but it’s gone. I remember a sound like a knife, but nothing more.”
“Ah,” Sword said. “It was quite an experience for me, too, but not so much that I forgot anything.”
“You and I, our magic is largely physical,” the Thief said. “Hers is perceptual. It’s different, I’m sure.”
“Of course,” Sword agreed.
“The Speaker can tell me my name?” the Seer asked again. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Sword said, startled by her insistence. “I told you she can. I’m quite sure.”
She looked at the Thief. “We need to find her.”
“We will,” he said. “But first we bring the Swordsman to Winterhome. It’s almost on the way, in any case.”
The Seer blinked. “Is it? She hasn’t moved.” She pointed to the southwest. “She’s that way, about a hundred and twenty miles.”
“In Seven Sides?” Sword asked.
“I don’t know,” the Seer said. “Is she?”
“I don’t know,” Sword said. “I think that’s the right general area, though, and she likes it there, as there’s a place with no ler. Her home I think would be more that way, and a little farther.” He pointed a little more to the west than the Seer had. Then he looked around, at the fading glow in the western sky and the black line of cliffs in the east, and at the unfamiliar buildings of Rock Bridge, and spread his empty hands. “Or I could be wrong. I may be misjudging completely.”
“Wherever it is, we need to find her,” the Seer said. “Winterhome is that way.” She pointed to the south and a little east. “Are you sure there isn’t a more direct route?”
“We need to deliver the Swordsman first, Skinny,” Snatcher replied. “And there aren’t many roads across the ridge into Greenvale, in any case. The nearest might be back in Mad Oak.”
“But she can tell me my name,” the Seer said.
“You’ve lived all these years without it,” the Thief said. “You can wait a little longer.”
“But . . .”
“Winterhome first. Then the Speaker.”
“I could come with you to fetch her,” Sword offered. “She knows me; that might be useful.”
“She’ll know us on sight, won’t she?” the Thief asked.
“Well . . . yes,” Sword admitted. “She’ll hear your souls telling her who you are.”
“And Boss told us to bring you first, then go get her, so we’ll bring you first, and then go get her. It’s settled.”
“I want my name,” the Seer muttered.
“Why is it so very important to you?” Sword asked. “Isn’t it enough to be known as the Seer?”
She hesitated, then said, “That’s what I’m called, but I don’t think of it as my name. I still think of what I was called in Bone Garden as my name, and I don’t want to. I want that gone. I want to know my true name, instead.”
“Why?” Sword was confused. “What were you called in Bone Garden? You said you weren’t a Breeder, but you . . .”
“Sword,” the Thief interrupted, “I don’t think you . . .”
“No,” the Seer said, cutting him off. ”You don’t decide, Snatcher. I do.”
“Of course, Seer, I know, but I . . .”
“You don’t decide. You don’t choose what I allow to hurt me.”
“I . . .” Snatcher looked baffled, then surrendered. “As you wish,” he said.
She glared at the Thief for another few seconds, then turned her gaze on Sword, meeting his eyes.
“You know that in Bone Garden, names are just descriptions, don’t you?” she said. “Just words, just facts, like calling a chair ‘Chair,’ or a tree ‘Tree.’ They’re never whimsical or . . . what’s the word? Metaphorical. They aren’t, ever. Your mother is called White Rose, but in Bone Garden that isn’t a name. It’s not possible. You understand?”
“All right,” Sword said, confused. He had known nothing of the sort, but was perfectly willing to believe it.
“The most common names are Farmer and Priest, but sometimes there’s someone chosen by the ler for something special, and that becomes his name—or hers. A child born to be sacrificed to freshen the soil
might be called Blood, for example, because that’s the only part of him that will matter, the only thing he lives for. I knew two people named Blood in my household.”
“Oh,” Sword said, unhappily.
“You understand?”
“I think so.”
She paused, as if working up her courage, and then said simply, ”My name was Feast.”
For a moment, Sword was unable to comprehend her words; they seemed like meaningless sounds. Then he understood.
“Oh,” he said again. He swallowed, and his mouth tasted of bile.
“That’s why I still have all my fingers and toes and ears,” the Seer said, almost casually. “No one wanted to waste any. Whipping and cutting didn’t bother anyone, that heals up, so I have my share of scars, but they kept me intact. And of course no one worried about mistreating me in other ways, since I wouldn’t be around for very long to seek revenge, and the ler would not permit me to bear children who might seek it for me. I wasn’t allowed clothing except in winter, but I was very well fed. I was quite plump. You’d hardly know it, now that I’ve been doing all this walking and only eating when I’m hungry, with no one trying to fatten me up.”
“Stop,” Sword said, feeling ill. “Please.”
The Seer continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “But then the old Seer came and stole me away and saved me, a few months before I was to be used. She told me she had asked the ler to help her; she wanted the person in all Barokan who most needed a new role, someone for whom being Chosen would be no hardship at all, and that was me.”
She smiled up at him.
Sword grimaced in response, and for a moment no one spoke. Then the Thief broke the silence.
“So now you know,” he said. “I get protective about her. Any time I start to feel angry about my life, I remember hers.”
“Boss doesn’t trust Bow with me because she thinks he might see no harm in treating me as the men of my hometown did,” the Seer said. “I already survived years of it, after all. He might see the damage as already done.”
“I hope she’s wrong about that,” Sword said, but remembering what he had seen of Bow he could not say with any certainty that she was wrong.
The Seer waved a hand. “It wouldn’t matter,” she said. “I did survive years of it. A little more, with just a single man, would be no great hardship. But Boss has her own concerns, and she wouldn’t stand for it.”
Sword shuddered. “I’m going back to the hostel,” he said. “I don’t feel well.”
“As you please,” the Seer said. “Snatcher?”
“I think we’ll walk a little more,” the Thief said.
Sword nodded silently and miserably, then went back alone, and crawled unhappily into his assigned bed, where he lay staring at the fresh planking of the ceiling for some time.
How could anyone speak so calmly of such abuse? The Seer was a strange little person, but given her background it was astonishing she could function at all. Sword found himself almost overcome with admiration for her. No wonder she wanted a new name, her true name!
It did not seem right that a place like Bone Garden could exist in Barokan. The Council of Immortals had created the Wizard Lords to keep wizards from harming innocents, and to keep outlaws in check, and had then created the Chosen to keep the Wizard Lord himself in check; why, then, had no one ever done anything to suppress the evils of Bone Garden?
But who would? Priests had no power outside their own native boundaries, and why would wizards concern themselves with one town in particular? How would it benefit them to purge Bone Garden of its horrors?
And could they? The current system was the result of the agreements made between the people of Bone Garden, and the ler of the land it was built upon. There were other towns where the ler demanded blood sacrifices of one sort or another, like Drumhead and Redfield and Barrel, and there was little anyone could do about it so long as those towns were inhabited; if the demands of the ler were not met the crops would not grow, the wells would run dry, the beasts of the forest would not allow hunters to slay them, the fish in the streams would avoid nets and spears and hooks. In Mad Oak the ler yielded to the constant coaxing and admonishment of the priestesses, in Willowbank they chose the Priest-King as the ruler of both themselves and the town’s human population, and so on, through a thousand towns and a thousand systems.
In Bone Garden the ler required abominations. Without them, the town would be uninhabitable.
Sword thought it probably should be uninhabited—but it was not his place to decide that.
The Wizard Lord had been perfectly happy to defy the ler in the path of his roads, and the ler of the Mad Oak and the other monsters in the wilderness, but the ler of a town were another matter. Sword knew that—but all the same, he wished Artil would ignore the laws and traditions, and do something to save all the other innocents trapped in Bone Garden.
Maybe someday he would. And if that happened, might the Council of Immortals demand that the Chosen remove the Wizard Lord, for exceeding his authority?
The idea of killing Artil for daring to destroy the tyranny of Bone Garden’s priests was almost as sickening as what those priests had planned for the Seer.
He sank at last into an uneasy sleep, only vaguely aware when the Thief and the Seer finally returned and settled into their own beds.
[ 16 ]
The remainder of the trip was made without trouble, and without any further major revelations—though the Seer did report, as they neared Beggar’s Hill, that the Speaker was no longer anywhere to be found. When last sensed she had been moving east, but now she had vanished from the Seer’s magical awareness, presumably by carrying ara feathers.
“She may know she’s wanted, and be heading for Winterhome,” Sword said. “The ler could have passed the news along.”
“Maybe,” Seer said with a shrug.
All in good time Sword found himself and his companions ambling past the Uplander guesthouses and into Winterhome proper.
He was slightly startled when the Thief steered him directly along the main road toward the central plaza fronting the Winter Palace; Sword had assumed that they would be gathering at Beauty’s home on the north street, but that was not the route they were taking.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
The Thief cast him a glance. “I’m not really supposed to tell you,” he said. “I’m supposed to say that they will find us.”
“Ah—Boss doesn’t trust me?”
“Exactly.”
“But the gathering is here in Winterhome?”
“Shall we just wait and see who’s in the plaza to meet us?”
“I suppose we could,” Sword admitted. He glanced at the Seer. “She knows where they are, I suppose.”
“No,” the Seer said. “They’re hidden from me.”
Sword nodded; he should have realized that they would be, since they would hardly want to advertise their whereabouts to the Wizard Lord. He wondered just who would be waiting, but he did not bother to ask. He would see for himself soon enough. He followed instructions without further argument, making his way quickly through the busy street until the three of them reached the plaza.
There was no sign of anyone waiting for them; the plaza was full of traders, merchants, travelers, and Host People, all going about their business, and none of them paying any attention to the three strangers. Snatcher led them quickly across the plaza to a jog in the facade of the Winter Palace, where he turned and said, “Wait here.”
Sword shrugged, glanced around, and leaned back against a stone wall, expecting to have a few minutes before their compatriots arrived.
“Swordsman,” a quiet voice said.
He turned, startled, and found two women standing a few feet away, with their backs against the wall of the Winter Palace. Despite the heat, both wore the shapeless black robes of Host People women, with black hoods pulled up and veils across their faces.
The nearer pulled her veil aside, though, to reve
al a familiar face.
“Babble!” Sword said, pleased. He had not seen the Speaker in seven years, but he recognized her immediately. Her face had perhaps acquired a few more wrinkles, but was otherwise not much changed.
“Erren Zal Tuyo kam Darig seveth Tirinsir,” she said. “The ler of muscle and steel are relieved you have returned.”
“And I’m glad to be back,” he said, as something inside him quivered at the sound of the first few syllables of his true name. “I thought you weren’t here yet!”
“Ler warned me I was wanted,” she said. “I came at their call and arrived last night.” Then she turned to the Seer and said, “Azir shi Azir ath Lirini kella Paritir jis Taban, I am honored to meet you, and to give you the start of your name. May it free you forever from the foul ler of your former home.”
The Seer stared at her. “Say it again,” she said.
“Azir shi Azir ath Lirini kella Paritir jis Taban,” the Speaker repeated.
The Seer shivered, and closed her eyes. “Azir shi Azir . . .” she said. “It’s beautiful.”
Sword smiled at the two of them. Then he looked at the other woman, the one who had called him Swordsman. This was not the Beauty; he could tell that much. It had not been the Beauty’s voice he heard. Besides, she was too short, and even through the concealing garments he could see she was simply shaped wrong.
The Thief, who had hung back as Babble spoke, now stepped up beside him and bowed. “Hello, ladies,” he said.
“It went smoothly?” the short woman demanded, in a surprisingly low, strong voice. It was definitely she who had called him “Swordsman.”
“Well enough,” Snatcher replied.
“Good. We’ll split up and meet you at the house—I’m with the Swordsman, you’re with Babble, Seer can please herself.”
“Azir,” the Seer said. “Call me Azir.”
“If you like, but we’re still splitting up. We don’t want to be noticeable.”
That comment reminded Sword that there were several guards in the plaza; he looked around, but did not see any near at hand. Three or four were visible on the far side of the plaza looking at something Sword could not see, but oddly, none were near the palace wall where the five Chosen stood.
The Ninth Talisman Page 19
