The big guard hesitated at that—and that was what Sword had wanted; he ducked, thrust, and cut across the man’s hand just above the wrist, on the fleshy part of the hand. The tip of his sword wedged against the guardsman’s hilt; Sword twisted his blade and tugged.
The man’s fist flew open, and his sword tumbled to the earth of the plaza. He backed away quickly, raising his hands in surrender. Blood from the fresh wound ran down his wrist.
And with him out of the way, Sword advanced toward the commander.
“Now,” he said, “do you really want to make enemies of the Chosen?”
“I have my orders . . . ” the commander said, empty hands held out, his gaze fixed on Sword’s face.
“You realize,” Boss said from behind him, “that you don’t know where the Archer is.”
The guard threw her a quick look, then raised his hands farther. “I’m just doing . . . ”
“… what the Wizard Lord told you to,” Boss finished for him. “Fine. And we’re doing what we must, and we are two of the eight people in Barokan who do not need to obey the Wizard Lord’s orders. Now, take your men and go away, before someone gets seriously hurt.”
The commander looked from Sword to Boss and back, and then gestured to his remaining men. He began walking toward the palace’s central door, head down, beckoning for the guards to follow.
The surrounding crowd cheered, though Sword had no idea what they thought they were cheering for. He paid them no attention as he crossed the plaza.
“So much for secrecy,” Boss said, as Sword walked over to her.
“I hope you aren’t too displeased with me,” Sword said. “Those earplugs worried me.”
“No, you did fine,” Boss said. “Obviously, the Wizard Lord has tried to prepare defenses against us. That’s not good.”
“I suppose so,” Sword said, as both of them ambled toward the gate.
They had not yet reached it when Lore stepped through and stopped to look over the plaza, at the shattered remnants of several spears and arrows, and a few small spatters of blood.
“I take it I missed the excitement,” he said.
“I’m afraid so,” Sword replied, smiling.
Boss stepped forward, hand out to shake. “You must be the Scholar, called Lore,” she said. “Call me Boss.”
“A pleasure to finally meet you,” Lore said, taking her hand.
“I’m sure. Now, come on—we have a great deal to discuss.” And with that she released his hand and spun on her heel, leading Lore and Sword back toward Beauty’s house.
[ 21 ]
“That was amazing, “ Azir whispered again, and again Sword waved for her to be still; he was listening intently to Lore’s description of the Wizard Lord’s behavior.
All the Chosen were gathered in the front room of Beauty’s home; Boss and Lore had taken the two chairs by the hearth, and Sword and Snatcher leaned against the walls nearby, while Azir sat on the hearth at Sword’s feet. Bow was perched on the stairs, while Beauty and Babble moved about.
“But it must have been twenty men!” the Seer insisted.
“Twenty-five, not counting the captain,” Sword told her. “Now be quiet.”
“Twenty-five!”
“It’s magic. Now shut up.”
Azir still seemed eager to say more, but seeing Sword keep his face steadfastly turned away finally discouraged her, and she fell silent. Sword did not have the impression, though, that she was listening to Lore; she was merely waiting until Sword stopped ignoring her.
“I think he’s sincere,” Lore said, as he concluded his account of what the Wizard Lord had told him. “I don’t think there’s any pretense, or that he intends any harm; he genuinely believes that Barokan would be better off without magic.”
“But with him ruling it, magic or no,” Boss said.
“Well. . . yes.”
“And no magic means no wizards.”
“What?”
Boss smiled humorlessly. “He’s been killing wizards.”
Lore glanced from one face to the next—Boss to Sword to Bow to Beauty to Snatcher to Azir to Babble. “You’re serious?”
“Completely. You hadn’t heard anything? Not even a rumor?”
“No! Not a word. That is . . . not that I remember . . .”
“Oh, don’t try that,” Sword said. “You’ve been up in the Summer Palace, where our magic doesn’t work. Whether you remember a specific detail you heard up there or not is meaningless.”
“Fine!” Lore retorted. “I don’t remember anything about killing anyone, and I think I would, magic or no. Farash and Artil and I talked about possibly doing something about places like Drumhead and Bone Garden eventually, and that it might mean killing the priests, but we decided it should wait another few years, to be sure. That’s the only mention of any killing that I remember.”
“What about a new member of the Chosen?” Boss asked.
Lore stared at her.
“Well?” she demanded. “Did anyone mention a ninth member of the Chosen?”
“I don’t. . . there should be one, shouldn’t there?” Lore’s surprise and puzzlement was plain on his face. “Because we killed a Dark Lord. Whenever that’s happened before, the Council of Immortals has added a new role. But they didn’t this time, did they?”
“We were hoping you would know,” Sword said.
“Well, I know how it happened with each of the others. When they first created the Chosen there was a Leader to decide when and how they should act, a Seer to find them and the Dark Lord, and a Swordsman to kill him. The Dark Lord of the Midlands killed the Leader before the Swordsman slew him, so they added the Beauty, to distract. Then the Dark Lord of Tallowcrane protected himself behind locked gates and barred windows, so after his death they added the Thief. The first Scholar was created when the Chosen who fought the Dark Lord of Kamith t’Daru repeated mistakes their predecessors had made. After the Dark Lord of the Tsamas was defeated it was decided that relying entirely on close combat was a mistake, and the Archer was added. I think they created the Speaker after the Dark Lord of Goln Vleys simply because they could, and adding a role had become traditional.”
“Wizards are very fond of tradition,” Sword remarked.
“Yes, they are, so they should have added a new role after you killed the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills, shouldn’t they? But I don’t know whether they did.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.” He shook his head. “No one’s told me anything about a ninth.”
“Who would have created the ninth talisman?” Boss asked. “Who would know?”
“The way it’s worked for all the others was that after the new Wizard Lord was appointed, the Council met in secret and devised the new role. Then they collected the necessary magic, summoned the necessary ler, and created the paired talismans. They gave one talisman to the new member of the Chosen first, and then presented the other talisman to the Wizard Lord. The new Chosen then went to the Leader and informed him of what the Council had done. No one told the Wizard Lord, though usually the new role became common knowledge long before the next Dark Lord happened along.”
“No one informed me of anything,” Boss said.
“You probably weren’t the Leader yet,” Lore replied.
A sudden hush fell.
“Do you really think that’s it?” Azir asked, breaking the silence. “Because then I probably wasn’t the Seer yet, and if the new Chosen always carried ara feathers, that would explain why I never sensed him clearly.”
“You haven’t sensed one?” Lore said. “Then why do you think there is one?” He looked from Sword to Boss, and back.
“Because that’s what his men have been questioning wizards about,” Boss said.
“Questioning?” Lore visibly relaxed. “I thought you said killing wizards!”
“I did,” Boss replied. “He’s been sending soldiers to question them about the ninth talisman, and if the wizards don’t answer, the sol
diers kill them. We know for certain that they’ve killed the Blue Lady—hanged her—and we’ve been told that they’ve killed at least three others, as well.”
“The Blue Lady? Liria vil Surulin aza Kilorim Nolaris hela Tiri? That Blue Lady?”
“How would we know her true name?” Boss demanded.
“That was her name,” Babble said quietly.
“I thought they were friends, she and Artil!” Lore exclaimed.
“Well, his men killed her anyway,” Boss said. “She wouldn’t tell them anything about the ninth talisman. Reportedly she said she couldn’t tell them, that there was a spell on her preventing it.”
“And they killed her anyway?” Lore sounded genuinely horrified.
“Yes.”
“Because of the ninth Chosen?”
“So it would seem.”
“But that’s . . . he knows that’s wrong. He’s allowed to kill wizards if they do anything forbidden, but he’s not allowed to interfere with the Chosen.”
Sword cocked his head. “You think it’s worse that he’s asking about the ninth talisman than that he’s killing people?”
“No, I . . . it’s not…” Lore stopped, took a deep breath, and began again.
“I’m not saying anything right now about what’s right and wrong,” he said, looking from face to face. “But part of my role among the Chosen is to say whether or not the Wizard Lord is following the rules set down for him, the rules that determine when we are supposed to depose or kill him. Under those rules, as set down by the Council of Immortals themselves, interfering with the selection, creation, or actions of the Chosen is indeed a worse offense than killing wizards who appear to be innocent of wrongdoing. The assumption is that wizards can appear innocent while actually being guilty of horrible crimes or posing a serious danger to Barokan, while interfering with the Chosen must be assumed to be an attempt to protect himself from us, which in turn implies he has a reason to believe the Chosen are a danger to him, which implies that he knows he’s done something wrong. You see?”
“So we’re never to give any wizard the benefit of the doubt?” Beauty asked. “Neither the ones he kills, nor the Wizard Lord himself?”
“That’s right, we aren’t. The wizards themselves set the system up that way.”
“Seems foolish of them,” Snatcher remarked.
“Wizards are traditionally more afraid of each other than of anything else in the world,” Sword replied.
“Well, this Wizard Lord doesn’t seem to be afraid of other wizards,” Boss said. “He’s killing them for nothing.”
“Not for nothing,” Beauty protested. “He’s trying to find out about the ninth talisman.”
“I’m not convinced there is a ninth talisman,” Boss said. “And if there is, does it make any sense to kill people who can’t tell you what you want to know about it? Wouldn’t it be better to keep them around and try to break the spell?”
“Maybe he’s just eliminating magic,” Lore suggested. “The talisman is just an excuse. He certainly talks enough about wanting a Barokan without magic—killing all the wizards is a step on the way there.”
“Rather a drastic one,” Sword said.
“And he’s not killing himself,” Bow pointed out. “He’s a wizard.”
“I don’t think he’s ready to go that far,” Lore said. “But he does spend months in the Summer Palace, where he has no magic.”
“And he hasn’t killed all the other wizards, so far as we know,” Boss said. “The wizard I spoke to said he’d found two others still alive.”
“The Wizard Lord’s men might not have gotten to them yet,” Lore suggested.
“You think he really wants to eliminate magic?” Sword asked. “That’s not just an excuse?”
“You don’t think he just wants power?” Boss asked. “If he can rule without magic, then besides the wizards, he can kill the eight of us without losing anything he cares about. Which might just be what he’s planning, and why he’s so anxious to find out about this supposed ninth.”
Lore hesitated, plainly unhappy with the question.
“You have to remember,” he said, “I didn’t have my magic up there. I don’t necessarily remember the entire truth. Even down here, I can’t always tell truth from falsehood, and in the Uplands I’m no better at it than anyone else—perhaps worse, since I’ve had less practice. This is only my opinion, and I have no magical knowledge to support it. That said, I don’t think it’s power he wants, exactly. Not power for its own sake.”
“Care to explain that?” Boss demanded.
“He told me this, late one night,” Lore said. “He wants to make things better. He became a wizard in the first place because he thought magic could make things better. He grew up in Caper, where the ler are whimsical and harsh, and he heard the stories about Drumhead and Bone Garden, and he always had the feeling that things ought to be better, that people could lead happier, richer, more comfortable lives, if only the priests weren’t catering to the inhuman forces of the natural world.”
“I’ve visited Caper,” the Archer muttered. “If he’s from there, I’m not surprised he’s a bit mad.”
“So he became a wizard in hopes of making things better, but he found he couldn’t really do much,” Lore continued. “He could do miraculous things, but only in limited ways. He couldn’t defy any of the established priesthoods—that would violate the rules of the Council of Immortals, and the Wizard Lord would kill him. He couldn’t change anything important—he tried, but the priests were too afraid, the ler too set in their ways. He couldn’t even set foot in many towns without first promising the local priests he wouldn’t do anything to upset the traditional ways—the ler would recognize him as a danger and forbid him entry.”
Sword remembered the first time he had ever seen Artil im Salthir, then known as the Red Wizard. The wizard had been hanging in the air above the village square in Mad Oak because the town’s ler would not let him land. Sword had not thought anything of it at the time, since he had so little experience of wizards, but now he saw it in a new light.
“He concluded that because magic derives from ler, it’s inherently opposed to change. The world as we know it is what the ler have made it, what we’ve made it by cooperating with ler. If we want something better, we need to impose it on the ler, on nature, by force.”
“And the only one who might be able to do that is the Wizard Lord,” Sword said, remembering how the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills had forced ler into unnatural behavior in his attempts to deter the Chosen.
“So he arranged to become the Wizard Lord,” Boss said.
“Or at least, seized the opportunity,” Sword said. “I don’t think he had anything to do with Galbek Hills’ becoming a Dark Lord.”
“Yes,” Lore said. “Exactly. He grabbed his chance. And now he’s trying to impose his will on the ler, pushing roads through the wilderness, defying the natural border between Barokan and the Uplands, setting up authority and organization independent of the priesthoods, so he can make Barokan better without magic.”
“And you don’t consider that wanting power?” Boss asked.
“Not power over people,” Lore said. “Power over nature.”
“We live in nature,” Beauty remarked.
“We’re part of nature,” Boss corrected her.
“But he wants to make things better,” Lore insisted. “For everyone.”
“Not like Farash, who just wants to make things better for himself,” Sword said.
“Don’t talk to me about Farash,” Boss grumbled. “You realize that if there really is a ninth talisman, and a ninth member of the Chosen, it’s Farash who probably knows all the details? If they informed the Leader, and it was before I took the role, then it was Farash they told. The Wizard Lord is sending his armies out interrogating and butchering wizards, when his chief advisor probably already knows all the answers.”
“We don’t know that,” Sword said.
“Farash may be how
he knows there is a ninth talisman,” Lore said. “Assuming there really is one. Maybe the wizards didn’t tell Farash enough of what Artil wants to know.”
“So Artil’s slaughtering wizards just to improve things,” Boss sneered.
“He does want to improve things!” Lore insisted.
“I don’t consider rainy days and crop failures an improvement,” Boss said. “And I’m fairly certain the dead wizards wouldn’t consider their removal an improvement.”
“But the roads!” Lore said. “The canals and bridges and ferries! The Boar of Linden Corner, the Mad Oak, all those other menaces he’s removed! And . . . and he has other things planned . . . ”
“He can do those from down here, and do them without killing anyone,” Boss said coldly.
Lore fell silent, looking around helplessly.
“So what do you plan to do?” Sword asked Boss.
She did not answer him directly, but instead said, “So killing those wizards isn’t necessarily a reason to remove him?”
Lore shrugged. “Not necessarily, but we don’t necessarily need a reason. We’re the Chosen; the rules say we are to use our own judgment.”
“All the same, I’d like to be able to point to a rule he’s definitely broken,” Boss said. “Lore, is there anything in all the stories, all the histories, about whether the Wizard Lord is required to stay in Barokan? Has it ever come up before?”
Lore hesitated, then said, “Not directly. The Dark Lord of Spider Marsh apparently fled from the Chosen at one point by sailing beyond the Western Isles, but then thought better of it and returned to negotiate. He had discovered that his ability to purify seawater so that he and his crew could drink it vanished if he traveled beyond Barokan’s waters.”
One of the more incomprehensible lines in an old ballad, about “he sailed where the sea’s salt could not be cleansed,” suddenly made sense to Sword, but it hardly seemed relevant. “That’s it?” he asked.
The Ninth Talisman Page 25
