The Ninth Talisman

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “ ‘I think my leg may be broken,’ he said, and I looked, pulling up the hem of the blue robe he wore, and there was a bruise on one leg from knee to ankle, starting to turn purple, but I didn’t see any swelling or dislocation. ‘I think it’s all right,’ I told him. ‘It doesn’t look broken.’ “

  “Can you really tell from just a look?” Bow asked.

  “Usually,” said the Seer. “Go on, Boss.”

  “Well, anyway, we got him straightened out and sitting up, and discussed his leg, and I said, ‘You’re lucky I was here,’ and he said, ‘It wasn’t luck. I was looking for you.’

  “I didn’t like the sound of that, and said, ‘What do you mean?’

  “ ‘You’re the Leader of the Chosen, aren’t you?’ he asked, and I admitted I was.

  “ ‘Then I was looking for you,’ he said. ‘The Wizard Lord has gone mad and started killing innocent wizards!’

  “ ‘How do you know they were innocent?’ I asked.

  “ ‘Because he tried to kill me!’ the old man said. ‘And while the Blue Lady might have done something, and Kazram could have gone rogue, I know I had done nothing at all but go about my own business as I always have.’ ”

  “He could have been lying,” Sword said.

  “Of course he could,” Boss agreed. “Though it was a little hard to think of this old man with a bruised leg as some dire scheming monster.”

  “But . . .”

  “Did I say I believed him?”

  “Uh . . . no.”

  “In fact, I reserved judgment, and asked him to explain himself. Which he eventually did.

  “As the old man told it, he had been minding his own business in his home in the southern hills when a group of about twenty men in red-and-black uniforms, with ara plumes on their sleeves and helmets, came marching up to his house. Their leader pounded on the door, demanding to speak with him, and when he answered he found this man there while four others stood behind him with swords drawn, five more behind them with spears raised, and the other ten farther back with bows ready and arrows nocked, spaced out so that a single air elemental could not reach them all before they loosed.

  “He asked what this was about, and the man who had knocked on his door announced that they had come on the Wizard Lord’s orders to inquire after certain forbidden objects. He asked the wizard to step outside to discuss the matter.

  “The old man claims he had no idea what they were talking about, but he didn’t like the look of all those weapons, so instead he dove back inside and slammed the door.

  “The spokesman tried to coax him out, but he refused, whereupon the men set fire to his house. He extinguished the fire, since he commanded several fire ler, but he decided not to stay around and argue; instead he climbed out an upstairs window and flew away.

  “The archers shot at him as he fled, but his aerial ler were able to deflect all the arrows—though only with great difficulty, since they were all fletched with ara feathers.”

  “Can you do that?” the Archer asked, with sudden intense interest.

  “So he said,” Boss replied. “I don’t really know.”

  “They aren’t as stiff as flight feathers,” Bow muttered, “since ara don’t fly, but maybe . . . ”

  “Go on,” Sword said, cutting Bow off. “Then what? He flew to find you?”

  “Oh, no,” Boss said. “He flew to find one of his friends and fellow wizards, someone named Kazram of the Bog. And he found him, all right—or at least his head, stuck on a pole in front of the burned-out ruins of his mansion. The rest of him wasn’t anywhere to be seen.”

  “Charming,” Snatcher muttered.

  “He asked a nearby farmer what had happened to Kazram, and the man told him that a group of the Wizard Lord’s soldiers had come and killed him because the wizard had been stealing from the local priests. ‘Was he stealing?’ the old man asked, and the farmer shrugged and said, ‘I suppose he must have been.’ He didn’t seem at all upset that his neighbor had been killed.”

  “In my experience, wizards aren’t very neighborly,” Bow remarked.

  “Nobody likes wizards,” Sword agreed, remembering his experience with Young Priestess four years earlier.

  “Go on,” Beauty said waving for Boss to continue.

  “So he flew on,” Boss said, “and found out that three others were also dead—one he called the Blue Lady, one he called the Cormorant, and one he called Brownleg. The Blue Lady had been hanged—I was somewhat surprised that a wizard can be killed by something as simple as hanging, but he assured me that it was possible for those whose magic does not include any sort of flight, nor anything that might sever the rope. Or in some cases, those whose talismans had been removed or destroyed might be unable to use any magical defenses. Brownleg and the Cormorant had been beheaded and staked, like Kazram, though in Brownleg’s case there was apparently a fire involved somewhere as well, and the head on display was little more than a scorched skull.”

  “Was he absolutely sure it was the wizard’s, then?” Sword asked.

  “He seemed certain of it, and I didn’t argue,” Boss replied.

  “So then he came looking for you?”

  “Not exactly; he found four dead wizards, but he also found two live ones—he didn’t tell me which. And they didn’t believe him when he said the Wizard Lord was murdering wizards for no good reason. ‘They must have done something,’ they said. ‘Perhaps they were plotting together, the four of them.’ “

  “Perhaps they were,” Bow said.

  “The old man didn’t think so, and he insisted that he certainly hadn’t been plotting anything, and the soldiers had come for him. ‘Well, perhaps you were a mistake,’ the other wizards said. ‘And here you are, safe and sound.’ They wouldn’t listen when he tried to convince them something was wrong. Neither would any of the ordinary people he spoke to, the neighbors of the dead wizards; they all seemed to think that if the Wizard Lord said those four were rogues, why, then, those four were rogues, and killing them had simply been the Wizard Lord doing his job.”

  “But the Wizard Lord didn’t kill them,” the Seer said softly. “He didn’t. I would have felt it.”

  “His men did, the wizard told me. His soldiers in red and black. No one claimed the Wizard Lord himself did it.”

  “But even then, I should have felt something when he gave the orders,” the Seer said.

  “Really?” Sword asked. “Does it work like that?”

  “I think so,” the Seer said, uncertainly.

  “Even if he gave those orders last year in his Summer Palace atop the Eastern Cliffs?” Boss asked.

  “. . . oh,” the Seer said quietly. “No. I wouldn’t sense anything then.”

  “But why would they obey him, if he didn’t have his persuasive magic?” Bow asked.

  “Because he’s the Wizard Lord,” Sword said. “That’s all he needs; no magic is necessary.”

  “Sword’s right about that,” Boss said, and Sword thought he heard a trace of bitterness in her tone. “People are generally quite happy to do what they’re told, magic or no.”

  “Willing, anyway,” the Seer said. Her bitterness was undisguised. “I don’t know about happy.”

  “At any rate,” Boss continued, “the soldiers had reportedly all said the Wizard Lord sent them, and they had marched openly out to the various wizards’ lairs, they made no effort to keep their actions secret. The possibility that the Wizard Lord had not sent them certainly occurred to me, but it also seemed perfectly reasonable that he had indeed decided to kill several wizards, for one reason or another. And the old man had done the appropriate thing by coming to me, as the Leader of the Chosen, and asking me to investigate.

  “So instead of going to Blackport I began to gather the Chosen, and to investigate what I could along the way, and here we are.”

  “What happened to the old wizard?” Sword asked.

  “I don’t know for certain,” Boss said. “He flew away. He said he was going to the
Western Isles, and would find a ship and flee Barokan until he received word that the Lord of Winterhome was gone.”

  “Sensible,” Snatcher said.

  “Not very brave,” Bow said.

  “No one ever said wizards have to be brave,” Sword replied.

  “What puzzles me, if this story is true,” Beauty said, “is that none of the dead wizards’ neighbors said a word to protest their deaths. Didn’t any of them have any friends to speak for them?”

  “Probably not,” Snatcher said. “Wizards aren’t generally the most pleasant people.”

  “Nobody likes wizards,” Sword repeated. “And those people all love the Wizard Lord. He’s brought Barokan together, made everyone wealthy with his roads and bridges, found work for all the bored young men who might have made trouble otherwise, removed dozens of annoying little problems like the Mad Oak. Who wants to argue with him, on behalf of some scruffy old wizard living in the wilderness?”

  “Especially since wizards have a tendency to get their living through theft, threats, or blackmail,” Boss said. “Most of them don’t earn their way with their magic like priests, they just take what they want. Oh, they’re not as bad as the ones in the old stories, they don’t openly rape and plunder anymore, but they don’t exactly win anyone’s love or gratitude, either.”

  “But they must have had family,” Beauty insisted.

  “I suppose that’s so,” Boss said. “For all we know, their brothers and sisters did object—but what could they do, once the wizards were dead?”

  “They could have asked the Chosen to avenge the dead,” Bow suggested. “Isn’t that what we’re for?”

  “But everyone loves the Wizard Lord,” Sword reiterated. “They don’t want us to kill him, even if he is murdering wizards.”

  “Killing him won’t make the roads go away,” Boss pointed out. “They’re there to stay, and now we all know how to build them.”

  “They probably believe him when he says the wizards were plotting against him,” Snatcher said.

  “They might even be right,” Bow said.

  “They might be,” Boss said. “I don’t know what really happened. I talked to people all the way here, but no one knew anything about any wizards, alive or dead. I don’t know for certain that these wizards are really dead. If they are, I don’t know who killed them. If the Wizard Lord’s soldiers did kill them, I don’t know whether the Wizard Lord ordered it or not. And if he did order it, I don’t know whether he had a good reason.”

  Sword shifted uncomfortably, debating with himself as to whether he should speak up. He had a theory as to why the Wizard Lord might have killed innocent wizards, but he had no real evidence for it.

  And he had already told the Leader that the Wizard Lord was trying to eliminate magic; she must surely have made the same guess he had, that Artil wasn’t just passively waiting for magic to fade away or die out on its own.

  “That’s why I’ve gathered us here,” Boss continued. “To find out what did happen, and why. Sword, you said the weather is running wild because the Wizard Lord deliberately let it go when he went up to his summer home.”

  “Well, he . . . Yes.”

  “Did he say anything about killing wizards? Anything that might possibly be related?”

  “Uh . . . ” Sword thought back, trying to remember everything he and Artil had discussed during those conversations over a year before. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Except that he thought Barokan didn’t need magic anymore.”

  “But you only spoke with him off and on for four or five days.”

  “Over a year ago. Yes.”

  Boss nodded. “Well, then, all of you—have any of you seen any wizards in the past year, alive or dead? Spoken with them?”

  The others exchanged wary glances, but heads shook and voices murmured, “No.”

  “But I never see any anyway,” Beauty said.

  “Few and furtive are the wary wizards,” Babble said. “I don’t. . . yes, yes, I don’t see . . . ” She didn’t finish the sentence, but instead stared at the chimney piece with a baffled listening expression.

  “I don’t think any of us see wizards very often,” Sword agreed. “Except for the Wizard Lord, I haven’t seen a wizard in four or five years. After all, there are only about a dozen and a half left in all of Barokan.”

  The Seer looked at him, startled, at that. “That few?”

  “Fewer, now, if the story Boss heard is true,” Snatcher said.

  “Azir, you can’t sense wizards the way you sense the Chosen and the Wizard Lord?” Boss asked.

  “Not unless they’re either nearby, or looking for me,” the Seer replied.

  “And Speaker, you haven’t heard anything from the ler who talk to you?”

  “No tales have been brought to me,” Babble answered. “Ler speak of their own concerns, of fitness and patterns and place, not of wizards or death, or news from afar.”

  “So the Wizard Lord may be killing off the other wizards,” Boss said. “He may be killing wizards plotting against him, in which case he’s entirely within his authority, or he may be trying to destroy Barokan’s remaining magic, which is probably not something he’s permitted to do. And he’s left the weather largely unconstrained while he absents himself from Barokan, which also may or may not be acceptable. You all agree with that?”

  There were nodding heads and noises of assent.

  “So we need to find out what he really is doing, whether these wizards are dead, and if they are, why they died.”

  Again, general agreement.

  “And once we know, we need to decide what to do about it.”

  “We know what to do about it,” Bow said.

  “We know what to do if he’s broken the rules, yes,” Boss said. “But the rules here aren’t all that clear. That’s why I want to talk to Lore, as soon as he comes down the cliffs. He knows the rules, the history, and the precedents better than anyone else. Maybe the Wizard Lord hasn’t done anything wrong. But if he has, then we know what to do.”

  “Ask him to resign,” the Seer said.

  “Yes. But if he won’t resign . . . ”

  “He told me once that he would abdicate, rather than fight us to the death,” Sword said.

  “But he may not have meant it,” Boss said. “He may have changed his mind. And if he has . . . ”

  “We kill him,” Bow said.

  [ 18 ]

  “The Wizard Lord won’t be down for a month or more,” Beauty said.

  “I know that,” Boss snapped. “That means we have a month to get ready for him, and to find out what’s been happening.”

  “We could go up the cliff and get him,” Bow suggested.

  “No, we couldn’t,” Sword said. “We have no magic up there.”

  “We could go up anyway.”

  “Bow, we have no magic up there. We’re just seven ordinary people, and he’s got dozens of guards.”

  “We aren’t going to confront the Wizard Lord outside Barokan,” Boss said flatly. “I’m not suicidal. Sending a message, though, to let him know we want to speak to him when he comes down, might be useful.”

  “I think we’d do better not to give him that much time to worry and plan,” Sword said.

  “Hm.” Boss frowned. “Well, you know him better than the rest of us.”

  “You said you wanted to talk to the Scholar,” Snatcher said. “Perhaps we could go fetch him down.”

  “Or just send him a message, asking him to come,” Sword suggested. “Really, it’s not pleasant for one of the Chosen to cross Barokan’s border.”

  “Then why does the Scholar do it?” the Seer asked. “This is the second year he’s gone up there with the Wizard Lord.”

  “I know,” Sword said. “I don’t understand it.”

  “It may not be as bad for him as it is for you,” Beauty suggested. “Each of us is different, with different magic.”

  “Sending Lore a message sounds good to me,” Boss said. “Bow, Sword,
Beauty, Babble, which of you knows him best?”

  The four older Chosen exchanged glances.

  “Probably Sword,” Beauty said.

  “The old Seer knew him better,” Sword said.

  “She’s not here,” Boss pointed out.

  “Boss, none of us know him all that well,” Sword said, “and sending any of us up the cliff is likely to be uncomfortable and draw unwanted attention. Couldn’t we send someone other than one of the Chosen?”

  “Of course we could,” Boss said. “We will. But I want one of you to write a note for the messenger to deliver.”

  “Oh!” Sword relaxed. “I can do that, I think. If someone helps me with the pen—I never got the hang of cutting quills.”

  “I can help,” Beauty said.

  “Good,” Boss said. “Do it tonight.”

  “Should I mention anything about dead wizards?”

  “Absolutely not. Just tell him we need to talk to him.”

  Sword nodded.

  “What are we going to do about the dead wizards, meanwhile?” Snatcher asked. “Did the old man tell you where any of these killings took place?”

  “He said he lived in the southern hills, and implied that the dead wizards all lived in the southwestern part of Barokan,” Boss answered. “Beyond that, no.”

  “The southern hills are a . . . no, be still! Go, yes. I mean, they cover a very large area,” Babble said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we can’t just wander around them randomly asking about wizards!” the Archer said. “That would take years, and we only have a month or so.”

  “I know,” Boss said. “I was hoping someone might have an alternative to suggest.”

  “Well, I think . . . ” Sword began. He stopped, unsure of whether he wanted to complete his thought.

  “Think what?” Boss demanded.

  “Well, there were other people there besides the locals when the wizards were killed, after all, and some of them might be here in Winterhome,” Sword said. “They would know more about it.”

  “What? What people?” Bow asked.

  “The killers, of course,” Boss said. “Good. Clever. So you think we should talk to some of the soldiers at the Winter Palace?”