Breaker turned to stare at her.
“I don’t want to kill you,” the crow said. “But I will if I must, even though it would destroy a portion of my own power.”
“And it would certainly mean that the other Chosen would vote to kill you,” the Scholar said. “Slaying any of the Chosen is one of the things absolutely forbidden to a Wizard Lord.”
“And not just the other Chosen would seek to avenge you, but the Council of Immortals,” the crow agreed. “Even if I slew all eight of you, every wizard in Barokan would be out for my blood, and I’d have almost no power left to oppose them.”
“I don’t think any of us want that,” the Seer said. “But you know we’ll need to tell the others about what you did here.”
“And then the eight of you will decide whether my vengeance was justice or madness, and if you choose to deem me mad, then it will mean war between us, war to the death.”
“It needn’t be to the death. You could resign your title,” the Scholar suggested, “as the Dark Lord of Spider Marsh did, two hundred years ago.”
“Perhaps,” the crow croaked. “Perhaps.”
Then the bird twitched, flapped its wings, cawed, and flew away.
Breaker did not need to hear the Seer’s words to know that the Wizard Lord was gone—for the moment.
And he knew now what the ghosts of Stoneslope’s murdered inhabitants wanted.
They wanted justice—or no, that was not quite right.
They wanted revenge.
[17]
They were eager to get out of Stoneslope, away from those haunted, overgrown ruins and the restless souls of slaughtered innocents, souls who had had no surviving priests to guide them from this world to the next; there was no need to find more evidence when the Wizard Lord had admitted what he had done, almost boasted of it. They had left swiftly, eager to reach shelter elsewhere—anywhere but Stoneslope—before full dark.
The journey back to the nameless village was relatively uneventful. The mud underfoot seemed even slicker than it naturally should be, and one vine draped itself around the Scholar’s throat with malicious intent, but careful walking and a swipe from Breaker’s sword disposed of these hazards.
They saw no animals of any kind this time. Breaker wondered about that. What was the Wizard Lord doing? What was he thinking? He knew they had seen Stoneslope, and he must know how horrified they were, but he was not doing anything, so far as Breaker could see. The clouds had scattered, the trail was less hostile—apparently he was making no attempt to prevent them from reaching the outside world, even though he must know they would tell others what they had seen.
What was he doing? Fortifying his tower? Preparing magic to protect himself from their inevitable assault?
He considered asking the Seer, but a glance at her expression convinced him not to address her—and in truth, he was not sure he could speak calmly at the moment, as the emotions of the ghosts of Stoneslope still lingered in his head, ready to burst out.
Besides, what if the Wizard Lord was listening? Or what if ordinary ler were listening, that might pass the word to others? Breaker knew that news could sometimes spread through the land itself, without human intervention, and he was not at all sure that they wanted this news to be turned loose just yet.
So he said nothing, the whole way back to the nameless village.
The sun was low in the west and the priest was waiting for them just beyond the boundary shrine when they emerged from the forest; some ler must have informed him that they were coming. “You’re alive!” he said, without preamble.
“I certainly hope so,” the Seer muttered as she stumped past the black marker, ignoring the faces that peered at them from the distant cottages.
“Did you expect the wild ler to kill us, or the Wizard Lord’s creatures, or what?” Breaker asked, genuinely curious, as he paused and leaned against the weathered boundary stone.
The priest shrugged. “Who knows? All I knew was that no one had come alive from Stoneslope in five years. Out ler had said something about a plague—but the ler can be vague and unreliable sometimes.”
“Just like anyone else,” the Seer said, stopping some twenty feet inside the village and turning.
“There was a plague,” the Scholar said. “Stoneslope’s people are all dead, and the secrets of their priests presumably lost.”
“Horrible, horrible! What can I do to aid you, then?”
The three Chosen exchanged glances.
“A warm bath, a hot fire, a hot meal, and a warm bed would be welcome,” Breaker said.
“Of course, of course! I’ll have them prepared.” The priest turned, and ran toward the village square in a thoroughly undignified fashion, as the weary Chosen followed at a more leisurely pace.
The baths were not as warm or as generous as Breaker would have liked, the fire was distressingly smoky because the unnatural rain had soaked much of the village’s stock of firewood, the meal was just oatmeal, and the beds were straw ticks in the village’s communal hay barn that crunched and rustled underneath them, but the villagers did their best to provide what the three had asked for. In exchange, once they had bathed and before heading to their beds they described what they had found in Stoneslope; for the most part they answered the villagers’ questions as best they could, but by unspoken mutual consent they never mentioned that the Wizard Lord had been responsible for the plague or the subsequent fires. They were not yet ready to tell all the world that a ninth Dark Lord now reigned over Barokan. Breaker was not entirely sure of his own reasons, but he knew he did not want to be the first to reveal the truth; he knew that once released, that truth could never be recaptured, and that he did not know what the consequences might be.
“I suppose no one was well enough to fight the flames,” Breaker said, when asked directly what started the conflagration.
“Why didn’t their ler protect them?” a girl of ten or so asked.
“Perhaps their priest angered the ler somehow,” the Seer suggested. “We don’t really know. All we know is what we found.”
“And you found your way there safely?”
“Easily,” the Scholar said, setting down his half-eaten oatmeal. “The ler of the forest did try to hinder us, but their efforts were really quite trivial. If anyone should care to negotiate new terms with the ler of Stoneslope, a new settlement might be established there.”
Breaker stared at him in astonishment. No one could live there until the ghosts were exorcised, the spirits of the dead calmed and sent on their way! What was Lore thinking?
The Seer saw Breaker’s expression and gestured for silence.
The villagers stirred, muttering and shuddering. “And risk another plague? I don’t think so!” a woman responded.
“And we have no idea how the priesthood there operated, in any case,” the priest said. “We don’t know whether they negotiated with the ler, or commanded them, or were enslaved by them. Anyone trying to create a new priesthood would be risking his life if he chose the wrong strategy.”
No one could deny that—and Breaker supposed the Scholar had known this would be the response. Still, his suggestion had seemed bizarre.
When at last the crowd had dispersed, and the three travelers had retired to the barn to sleep, Breaker asked quietly, “Now what?”
“Now we gather the Chosen,” the Seer said. “The Speaker lives just a few days’ travel northwest of here, the Archer not much farther. The Thief lives in the eastern Midlands and the Leader is traveling not far from there, while the Beauty lives in Winterhome. We’re fortunate that no one is in the northern valleys, or out on the islands, or in the far marshes.”
“That’s assuming they don’t move around,” the Scholar pointed out. “Just because most of them are home at the moment doesn’t mean they’ll stay there. They may well be on the islands by the time we catch up to them.”
“We can send word somehow,” the Seer said. “Especially once we find the Speaker.”
“But we’re in the Galbek Hills,” Breaker protested. “The Wizard Lord’s tower is just a few miles away, isn’t it?”
“About thirty miles,” the Seer agreed, pointing to the southwest.
A little of the remembered fury of the ghosts of Stoneslope scratched at Breaker. “But you want us to go wandering all over Barokan, while the Wizard Lord builds up defenses and prepares for us, instead of just going there now and killing him?”
The Seer sighed. “That’s right,” she said.
“You can go try to kill him yourself, if you want,” the Scholar said, “but you would be acting alone, and the rest of us would feel no great need to do anything about it if the Wizard Lord were to kill you in self-defense. Once we have agreed that he must be removed, then any harm he does to you would bring our collective wrath down upon his head, but now? Seer and I saw Stoneslope, and felt the ler there—while I can’t speak for her, I think killing the Wizard Lord is more than justified, it’s essential. But we are only three; the other five were not with us.”
Breaker frowned. “The three of us could go to his tower together,” he said.
“Are you that eager to kill him?”
Breaker bit off his immediate reply of “yes,” and before he could say anything else the Seer spoke.
“Are you that eager to die?” she asked. “He could kill us easily.”
“But . . . very well, then, would eight be so much more formidable than three? He could kill all of us, just as he wiped out that village.”
The Seer shook her head. “No,” she said. “He would destroy his own magic in the process, and the other wizards would make quick work of him.”
“And we are immune to his magic, his diseases and fires,” the Scholar added. “He could undoubtedly kill us, but not in the same way he slaughtered his townsfolk.”
“But . . . he could still kill us, surely.”
“Three of us, yes,” the Seer said patiently. “But if the eight of us act together, he cannot kill us without destroying his own power and leaving himself defenseless against the other wizards. If he knows he faces all the Chosen he may see sense and surrender his position without a fight; against three, that’s far less likely.”
Breaker wanted to argue further, but he knew his companions were right. He had wanted to go and get it over with, to confront the Wizard Lord while the horrors of Stoneslope were fresh in his mind, to avenge the dead swiftly, but he knew that would not work. The Chosen were chosen to act together, and not in haste.
The idea that the Wizard Lord might surrender peacefully, and not be punished for his butchery with death, did not suit Breaker just now, but he knew intellectually that it might be best.
“The Speaker,” he said. “You want to find her first?”
“She’s the closest.”
Breaker hesitated, then said, “I heard she’s mad.”
The Seer and the Scholar exchanged glances.
“She wasn’t when last we spoke,” the Seer said, “but I can see how some might think she is. After all, she can hear things no one else hears, and aside from priests, most people who hear voices no one else can hear are mad.”
“Is that what it is?” Breaker asked. “I thought she could speak any tongue, I didn’t know she heard voices.”
“She can hear, speak, and understand every tongue in Barokan,” the Seer explained. “And not just the human ones. She hears the ler, the birds and beasts, spiders and flies, earth and flame, the messages that wizards send one another on the wind—everything. If she ever does go mad she’ll have good reason, after living with such a constant din!”
Breaker tried to imagine what it would be like, hearing everything, and quickly gave up. That was not a role he would have accepted; being the Swordsman was far simpler and more straightforward.
“If she were to die,” the Scholar said, “the Wizard Lord would no longer be able to command other creatures, nor speak through them. That’s the portion of his magic bound to her.”
This was interesting information, not something he had known before; Breaker nodded. Then a sudden thought occurred to him.
If he were to kill the Speaker, the Wizard Lord would be a less formidable foe. If he were to kill all the other Chosen, the Wizard Lord would be almost defenseless.
But that was insane; the Chosen were his equals, his helpers and partners. He had no reason to kill any of them, nor any intention of harming anyone but the Wizard Lord.
The Wizard Lord deserved to die for what he had done to Stoneslope, and it was Breaker’s duty as the Swordsman to see that justice was done, but that hardly gave him the right to kill anyone else, let alone betray and murder his own companions! Where had such a horrible notion come from?
Was the Wizard Lord influencing his thoughts somehow? That was a terrifying idea.
No, he told himself, that was foolish. The idea of killing the others was just one of those strange passing thoughts that sometimes wandered through a tired mind—especially one that had just suffered something like seeing and feeling the horrors of Stoneslope!
“I need some rest,” he said—but then another, more urgent thought struck him.
He had not yet practiced his swordsmanship for the day. The trip to and from Stoneslope, and the brief investigation there, had taken up the entire day and thrown his usual schedule into disarray. Perhaps that was where the morbid thoughts were coming from—the ler that gave him his skill, and who sometimes seemed to glory in the thought of bloodshed, were affecting him.
“Oh, blood and spirit,” he said, rolling off his mattress and getting to his feet.
“What is it?” the Seer asked.
“Practice,” he said, drawing his blade.
There was no need to go outside; the barn was spacious enough, and with the sun down the candlelight inside provided better visibility. He sighed, and began running through his usual exercises, thrusting the sword to either side of a pillar, lunging and feinting.
The Seer and the Scholar watched, but by the time he finally sheathed his sword and blew out the candles they had both been sound asleep for several minutes. Whatever requirements their magic might make of them—and Breaker knew that the Scholar, at least, did have some sort of daily requirement, something about learning new facts every day—had apparently been met earlier.
They set out without a guide the following morning; the Scholar was sure he could remember exactly the route by which they had arrived and the prayers their guide had spoken along the way, and surviving the previous day’s ordeal had given them all confidence in their own abilities to cross hostile territory unscathed.
“I’ve done this before,” the Scholar admitted, as they ambled along. “Not this particular route, but retracing a path I’d been guided on. It’s one of the more useful manifestations of my magic.”
“Are you sure it’s really safe?” Breaker asked, as he dodged a low-hanging branch that seemed to be trying to poke out his left eye.
“No,” the Scholar said. “But then, what is?”
Breaker had no reply to that.
They reached the town of Argand Wager an hour or two past noon; here they had a choice of routes, rather than the single link that joined the nameless village to the rest of civilization, but the Seer had no doubt of which they should take, and a guide was expected that very evening.
They made good progress. They spoke very little on the road; Breaker was not sure just why. It certainly wasn’t that they had nothing to discuss; there were hundreds of questions he wanted answered. How could the Wizard Lord have done such a thing? When the Seer felt the deaths, why hadn’t she realized how many there were, and that they could not possibly have just been the handful of rogue wizards Boss had said they were? Why had she taken the Leader’s word and done no investigation of her own?
Was it really necessary to find the others before doing anything about the Wizard Lord’s crimes?
Now that they were set out upon out their appointed task of removing a Dark Lord, why did he feel no
different? Why was the sun still bright and warm, the countryside calm? Shouldn’t there be some outward sign of the atrocities in Stoneslope, something that would show anywhere in Barokan?
If he was one of a brotherhood of heroes, on their way to avenge murdered innocents, why did he feel no particular kinship with the Seer or the Scholar? He was as detached as ever. The Scholar was pleasant enough company, but they were not close, and the Seer seemed like a combination of his mother and Elder Priestess rather than a companion and equal. Shouldn’t they be bonding into the sort of team that the Chosen were in all the old stories, ready to die for one another, understanding each other so well that they could anticipate each other’s actions without words?
And they weren’t. They were just three people traveling together. Breaker had no feeling that they were on any sort of adventure; he could not imagine that anyone would ever tell epic tales of the three of them walking from town to town.
But then, why was there no adventure? Why wasn’t the Wizard Lord trying to stop them? Why were there no monsters, no traps, no messages trying to deter them, no threats nor bribes?
It was all very strange, and didn’t seem entirely real, somehow—until he closed his eyes and remembered the blackened ruins of Stoneslope, there beneath the overcast skies, with the scattered mounds that hid the bones of the dead. He remembered that tiny skull in the Seer’s hand, and he shuddered.
That seemed far more real than the sunny skies, the light scattering through the leaves or shining off the farmers’ fields, as they walked behind their hired guide, watching the ara feathers on his hat flutter in the gentle breeze.
The Speaker had been a good hundred miles away when they left Stoneslope, the Seer reported, but by the third day she had begun moving toward them. “Something probably told her we were coming,” the Scholar said.
And on the fifth day they found the Speaker sitting in the central temple of a large and prosperous town called Blessed of Earth and Sky, waiting for them. Several priestesses were going about some ritual, so that the temple was full of women walking to and fro, and Breaker would never have noticed the Speaker if the Seer hadn’t tugged at his sleeve and pointed her out.
The Wizard Lord Page 19