The Wizard Lord

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  She was a tiny little thing in a dark brown cloak, curled up on a bench, knees tucked in, leaning one shoulder against the wall. Breaker thought at first she was a child, from both her size and her posture, but then she turned her face so it caught the sunlight from the open door and he saw that she was perhaps twice his own age, though not as old as the Seer. Her hair was still dark and curly, her skin still mostly free of wrinkles and blemishes, but there was no question that she was past the full bloom of youth.

  And her dark eyes seemed touched with madness. Even before she said a word, Breaker understood why so many people thought she was mad—her face was full of irrational intensity. Her fragile form hardly seemed suitable for a Chosen Hero, but those eyes were another matter entirely.

  She looked at the three Chosen but did not say anything, nor make any move to leave the bench. For a moment the three of them stood staring silently at her, while she stared back. Then Breaker bowed.

  “I am the new Swordsman,” he said. “I am honored to meet you.”

  “Erren Zal Tuyo kam Darig seveth Tirinsir abek Du,” she said, in a soft, unsteady, high-pitched voice, her eyes fixed on his face.

  Breaker jerked upright at the sound of so much of his true name; he could feel its power close on his heart. “Yes,” he said.

  “And Shal Doro Sheth tava Doro kal Gardar.”

  The Seer grimaced.

  “And Olbir Olgurun pul Sasimori ken ken Frovor.”

  The Scholar flinched.

  “We are met, four of the eight, half the Chosen,” she continued, in a sort of singsong. “You want to decide the fate of Laquar kellin Hario Vor Tesil sil Galbek.”

  “Yes,” the Seer said.

  “So much ler have told me,” the Speaker said, straightening a little. “The winds and sky have told me this, because I could hear your soul, Shal Doro, calling out to mine, asking where I could be found, and so I asked the ler why you sought me. But all they could tell me were certain of the words you had spoken as you traveled, and thus I learned that you wanted to speak to me of the life of Laquar kellin Hario, but did not learn why. I have come here to meet you, in this quiet place, so that you can tell me why.”

  “Quiet?” Breaker looked around at the hurrying priestesses, listened to their footsteps on the stone floors echoing from the stone walls, heard a dozen voices chanting in another part of the temple and echoes answering them, as well.

  “Remember,” the Seer said, “she hears everything. In here she hears people and stone, but there are no birds nor beasts, the ler speak in concert . . . and I’m starting to talk like her.” She sighed. “She always has this effect on me.”

  “It’s because she uses true names,” the Scholar said. “It creates a bond.”

  Breaker refused to be distracted. “Speaker, as I said, I am honored to meet you,” he said. “I hope we will be friends, as it appears we are fated to be companions.”

  “I have no friends,” the Speaker replied, a note of woe creeping into her singsong. “I have no time for friends, when so many voices call to me.”

  Breaker did not know what to say to that; he looked helplessly at the Scholar, who shrugged.

  “There are things I would say that I would prefer the priestesses of this temple not hear,” the Seer said. “Is there somewhere we can go where no other people will hear us?”

  “We are heard everywhere, always,” the Speaker murmured.

  “No people,” the Seer repeated. “I know ler will hear us, and probably spiders and insects and the birds above, and quite possibly the Wizard Lord himself if he’s listening, but I would prefer not to be heard by any other people.”

  The Speaker sighed, lifted her head and shoulder from the wall, and uncurled her legs. “Come, then, Shal Doro, Erren Zal, and Olbir Olgurun.” She rose from the bench and led the way down a corridor and out of the temple.

  Now that she was upright Breaker could see that she was close to the Seer’s height, but probably only weighed half what the older woman did. Beneath the brown cloak she was dressed entirely in black, though golden embroidery shone at collar and cuffs.

  As they walked, Breaker asked, “Why do you use our true names?”

  She threw him a startled glance. “Ler know no others,” she said. “Your souls speak your names to me endlessly.” She hesitated. “Would you prefer I call you something else?”

  “Among my people, using true names is considered . . . well . . .” Breaker groped for the right word to express the normal Mad Oak attitude, and finally found it. “Bullying. It’s considered bullying. Because true names have power.”

  “Of course they do. I see.” She almost stumbled as they reached a short flight of stairs leading down, but caught herself. “Then what would you have me call you?”

  “I’m the Swordsman. Most people call me that.”

  “Ah.” They reached the bottom of the stair, and she said, “But you do not truly think of that as your own name yet—it’s a title, more than a name. Your predecessor was known as Blade to his friends; do you have a nickname like that? Or would you like to be called Blade?”

  Breaker shook his head. “No, he can keep that name; I don’t want it.”

  “You were known for more than half your life as . . . Shatterer? Divider? The ler do not speak our tongue . . .”

  “Breaker.”

  “And you still think of yourself as the Breaker.”

  Breaker glanced back and saw the Scholar listening with obvious interest.

  “I suppose I do,” he admitted.

  “I will call you Sword.”

  It was Breaker’s turn to almost stumble; he had assumed she was about to settle on using his old nickname, and the sudden change of direction startled him—not to mention the coincidence that she had happened on the same nickname his neighbors had used, back in Mad Oak. He opened his mouth to say something, then stopped.

  He did not really want his old name back; he did not want to break anything.

  “Sword is good,” he said.

  The Seer and the Scholar glanced at one another.

  Then the four of them stepped into a small room of bare stone, and the Speaker closed the door behind them, plunging them into utter darkness, before Breaker—or Sword—could take in much of their surroundings.

  He could hear something crunching underfoot, though.

  “A storeroom,” the Speaker said. “It held grain for the winter, but winter is done and the new harvest not yet in. The room is strong, the walls thick stone without seam, to keep out mice. We won’t be heard by human ears, and the ler of the grain are slumbering. Only the stones speak, and their words are slow and gentle.”

  “Good,” the Seer said; the other two made no comment, but Breaker, for one, found the darkness uncomfortable.

  “Tell me, then, why you believe Laquar kellin Hario must be removed.”

  “Have you ever heard of a town called Stoneslope?” the Seer asked.

  “Not that I recall, not by that name,” the Speaker replied. “The ler would have another name for it, of course.”

  “Of course. It’s the town where the Wizard Lord was born and raised; he left when he was fifteen.”

  “Ah! Yes, I know of it. What of it?”

  “It’s gone,” the Swordsman said—partly just to hear his own voice and remind everyone that he was there in the dark.

  “The Wizard Lord destroyed it,” the Seer said.

  “But—a moment, then.”

  For what seemed several minutes, no one spoke—though Breaker was unsure exactly what they were waiting for. Then the Speaker said, “And he slew all who lived there?”

  A new note had crept into her voice, the singsong become a dirge.

  “So it appears, and so he believes,” the Seer said. “The air was thick with the souls of the dead, all full of fear and anger.”

  “The aunt who took him in when his father died? His childhood betrothed? The cousin he deflowered instead?”

  “If they were there, he killed t
hem,” the Scholar said.

  The Speaker made a noise of strangled disgust. Then silence descended again, broken only by the grinding of spilled grain beneath Breaker’s boots as he shifted nervously.

  “We must find Farash inith Kerra das Bik abba Terrul sinna Oppor, and the others,” the Speaker said.

  “Farash . . .” Breaker did not recognize any part of the name.

  “The Leader,” the Speaker explained. “Boss.”

  “Yes,” the Seer replied. “We agree. Boss and the others. The Archer is nearest; could you send him word to meet us halfway?”

  [18]

  The Speaker could speak to anything that lived or had any spiritual existence, but she could not easily command anything; the birds and ler she asked to convey the message did not cooperate. She could have forced them by using their true names, but did not want to, as it would bring protests only she could hear.

  At last, though, she found a stray dog that agreed to carry a note tied round its neck, and to find the man with the scent the Speaker described.

  “You can describe a person’s scent well enough to identify him?” Breaker marveled, as the dog ran off.

  “Only in the languages of dogs,” the Speaker said. “Half their vocabulary—more than half—is about smells. They have no words for color or music, but a thousand shades of acrid, a thousand kinds of sour.”

  “And how do you know the Archer’s smell well enough to describe him that way?”

  “It’s in his true name,” she said. She hefted her pack. “Shall we go?”

  They went.

  Two days later the four of them were sitting in a tavern in a town called Seven Sides, talking to some of the locals. The townsfolk had recognized Breaker as the Swordsman immediately—not difficult, given the sword on his belt—and then guessed that the people with him might also be Chosen. They had quickly identified the Seer, and guessed the Speaker; now they were trying to determine which of the Chosen the fourth might be. The travelers had agreed to play along with this guessing game in exchange for bread, ham, gravy, and beer. They sat, eating silently, and listening while the natives argued.

  “He doesn’t have a bow or any arrows.”

  “I think the Leader would have to be taller.”

  “That leaves the Thief and the Scholar.”

  “And the Beauty, but I think we can rule that one out.”

  That evinced a round of laughter. “How do we know he even is one of the Chosen?” a boy asked as the laughter subsided. “Maybe he’s just a friend of theirs.”

  “The lad has a point.”

  “But they agreed to our game! They wouldn’t have done that if he wasn’t one of them; it wouldn’t be honest.”

  “Are the Chosen necessarily honest?”

  “I certainly hope so!”

  “Then he’s the Thief or the Scholar.”

  “Or he left his bow and arrows somewhere else.”

  “Look at his arms—he’s not one accustomed to drawing a bow. The Swordsman has the shoulders of a fighting man, but this other one . . .”

  “The Scholar or the Thief.”

  “The Thief, I’d say.”

  “Uh . . . isn’t the present Thief a woman?”

  That brought a sudden startled silence, followed by a burst of argument.

  “She is! She is, I tell you!”

  “Who knows? Would a thief admit to being a thief?”

  “Then who’s the woman?”

  “She’s just trying to get attention!”

  “The real Thief wouldn’t want attention.”

  “I don’t think she’s trying for attention.”

  As they argued, Breaker finished the food on his plate, gulped the remainder of his beer, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked around at the crowd.

  There were at least a score playing the game, and a score more watching; the tavern’s dining room was packed full. They seemed friendly enough, and so far the game’s arguments had remained calm and not turned into quarrels. They all wore the town’s standard garb of white blouse and leather vest—apparently the local ler demanded this attire.

  All, that is, except the man in the doorway, who was watching and listening with amused interest; he wore a dusty deerskin tunic, instead. And he carried a bow on his back.

  He was a tall, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted fellow with a narrow face and pointed jaw; he wore his light brown hair long and loose, but his beard was trimmed short and to a point that exaggerated the sharpness of his chin. His clothes were worn and not particularly clean, from square leather cap to muddy brown boots. He smiled crookedly at Breaker.

  No one else seemed to have noticed him yet.

  Breaker cocked his head, and the man with the bow nodded an acknowledgment.

  “Excuse me for a moment,” Breaker said, getting to his feet.

  People moved aside to let him rise from his chair and slip out of the crowd; oddly, none of them looked where he was looking, and no one else seemed to notice the man at the door.

  The man stepped to one side as Breaker approached, as well, but then turned his back to the tavern wall and said, “So you’re the new Swordsman?”

  Breaker looked him in the eye—the two men were very close in height. “And you’re the Archer.”

  “I got Babble’s note—the Speaker’s, I mean. So we’re finally going to do what we swore we would when we accepted these roles, then? We’re going to kill him?”

  Breaker hesitated. “So it would seem,” he admitted.

  “Do you want to do it, or should I?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Breaker replied. “I assumed that whichever of us had the better opportunity would do it. I mean, if it needs to be done.”

  “That’s fine, then. You don’t mind if I do it? You won’t feel I’ve cheated you out of the glory?”

  Breaker blinked. This was not at all the conversation he had expected. “No, I don’t mind,” he said. “If you have the chance, go ahead.”

  “That’s fine, then!” The Archer reached out and clapped Breaker on the shoulder. “I think we’ll get along just fine, lad—you’ve got more sense than your predecessor, that’s plain!”

  “I don’t . . . I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Oh, no question about it. He kept insisting he didn’t want to kill anyone, which is all very well, but then he said I shouldn’t, either, and really, what’s the point of being one of the Chosen, then? Our whole purpose is to kill the Wizard Lord!”

  “Well, if he deserves it,” Breaker said. “If he’s turned wicked.” He hesitated, unsure what to say next, because after all, as he well knew, the Wizard Lord had turned wicked and needed to be removed. The ler of a hundred dead innocents had said so, and the Wizard Lord himself had admitted murdering them.

  “And if he hasn’t, we don’t do anything at all? That’s just so pointless. I knew when I agreed to become the Archer that we’d have a Dark Lord soon—I could just feel it, as if ler were whispering to me. And sure enough, we do—though old Blade never wanted to admit it, and I don’t think the others even realized it.” He smiled, and leaned against the wall. “So how did you convince them?”

  “I didn’t,” Breaker said. “They convinced me. Something the Scholar said made the Seer suspicious, and they dragged me along, and we all went to the Wizard Lord’s home village, a place called Stoneslope, and we saw what he’d done to it. And that’s when the three of us knew.”

  “Something Lore said? The Seer always did take his stories seriously, but they all just sounded like a lot of dusty, useless nonsense to me.”

  “It’s complicated,” Breaker said—he did not feel like trying to explain anything to this strange man, who seemed downright enthusiastic about killing the Wizard Lord.

  “So the Wizard Lord did something bad to his old neighbors?”

  “He killed them,” Breaker said.

  The Archer seemed suddenly wary. “Were they wizards? We aren’t supposed to interfere if he kills wizards—we�
��re to assume they’d gone rogue and started raping girls and eating babies.”

  “They weren’t wizards. Not all of them, anyway—there might have been a wizard in there somewhere.”

  “Not all . . . ? And somewhere . . . ?” For the first time the Archer’s confidence looked slightly shaken. “Ah, how many people did he kill?”

  “All of them.”

  For a moment the Archer stared at him, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he killed them all. The entire town. He sent a plague, and then killed the survivors and burned the town.”

  The Archer stared for a moment, then shook his head. “No, he didn’t.”

  “Yes, he did. Five years ago. We only just found out.”

  “No, that’s insane. Why would he slaughter a whole town? What about his friends and family there?”

  “He claims he had no friends—and yes, it’s insane. That’s why we need to kill him.”

  “By the ghosts of my ancestors,” the Archer said quietly. “He’s gone completely mad?”

  “Yes, of course—why else would we be planning to kill him?”

  “Well, I . . . well, yes, I see. You’re right, of course.” He stared thoughtfully at Breaker.

  Breaker stared back, then glanced at the open tavern door.

  “The Scholar!” someone was shouting. “He’s the Scholar! Must be!”

  “Why didn’t they notice you?” Breaker asked.

  “Because I didn’t want them to,” the Archer said. “That’s part of my magic—not being noticed.”

  “They can’t see you?”

  “They don’t see me. It’s not the same thing. If they were actually looking for me, or if they happened to glance right at me without any distractions, then they would see me, but I can just . . . fail to attract attention. Not stand out. It’s all part of the magic.”

  “I thought your magic was just archery—hitting what you aim at.”

  “Oh, that’s the other half—but the ability to wait, to lurk, to go unnoticed until I can make my shot, that’s all part of it, too. After all, don’t you have superhuman speed and agility even when you don’t have a sword in your hand? Aren’t there things you can do without a blade?”