The Wizard Lord

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “I suppose,” Breaker agreed, remembering the women he had bedded over the past few months, and how they had reacted. How did that fit in with the skills needed to slay a Dark Lord?

  “And Lore doesn’t just remember stories about the Wizard Lords, and Seer can do more than tell us where the Wizard Lord is, and Babble can understand every language there is as well as speak it, and knows all the true names—we all have more than one skill, more than one ler bound to us.”

  “I suppose.”

  For a moment the two of them were silent, contemplating one another; then the Archer said, “So then, we’re agreed that the Wizard Lord must die, and you don’t mind if I take care of it?”

  Breaker hesitated. “The Seer says we need to find the others, first.” It occurred to him to wonder just why he was so willing to yield to her in this, when they were nominally equals, but he knew why—she was his senior in every way, and knew things he did not. She had decades of experience, while he was not yet twenty. And she reminded him of the women he had obeyed back in Mad Oak; he deferred to her without thinking about it.

  The Archer frowned. “Oh, I suppose she’s right. How very tedious—but we want to do things properly.” The frown vanished. “And this means we’ll meet the Beauty, doesn’t it? That should be pleasant—I’ve always wondered what she really looks like.”

  Breaker started. “You don’t know? Haven’t you met her?”

  “No, I haven’t. Have you?”

  “No—but I’ve only been the Swordsman for a few months.”

  “And I’ve only been the Archer for . . . oh, I suppose it’s seven years, now. Not so very long, at any rate, and the Beauty keeps to herself. I’ve met Lore and Seer and Babble and Boss, but until today I hadn’t met you, and I haven’t met the Thief or the Beauty.”

  “You’d met the Old Swordsman, though.”

  “Blade? Oh, once or twice. Not often.”

  “But not the Thief or the Beauty?”

  “No. They don’t . . . well, I don’t know what the story is, really. Maybe they’re supposed to remain hidden, so the Wizard Lord won’t know who they are and they can take him by surprise.”

  “But he can find all of us, just as the Seer can, I thought. I mean, he’s the Wizard Lord—he knows where everybody is. It goes with the job.”

  “Probably. I don’t know.”

  “He knows where we are right now. Everyone knowing who we are—I wonder about that,” Breaker said. “I mean, wouldn’t it be better if we could take the Wizard Lord by surprise?”

  “Oh, I. . .”

  The Archer’s reply was interrupted by a man emerging from the tavern, calling, “Swordsman? Are you . . . hey! The Archer! You’re the Archer, aren’t you?”

  The Archer sighed and acknowledged his identity, and the two men allowed themselves to be herded inside, questioned, studied, toasted, and admired. Later in the evening the Archer demonstrated his skill by putting a dozen arrows, one after the other, through an iron ring swinging on the end of a string; when the performance was over he explained quietly to Breaker that quite aside from satisfying the locals’ demands for a display of magical skill, this fulfilled the daily ritual the ler demanded of him—he didn’t need to spend an hour in practice, but was required to hit twelve difficult targets with missiles of one sort or another.

  “Sometimes I just toss pebbles, or other things,” he said, “but in that case the targets need to be very difficult.”

  Breaker nodded, and wondered what demands were made on the other Chosen, but then the townsfolk came roaring up to him demanding a display of his prowess.

  Well after midnight the five of them were at last permitted to retreat to the special compound where the town’s visitors could spend the night without being possessed by the local ler as they slept, and where they could speak more privately. No ordinary inn or guesthouse was available in Seven Sides because the town’s spirits, rather than merely sending dreams into sleeping minds, had a habit of animating sleeping bodies and using them to act out their favorite tales of olden times. The presence of strangers meant the possibility of new and dangerous stories—the ler sometimes got carried away, and people often awoke to find they had sustained bruises and scars reenacting ancient battles. The presence of a swordsman and an archer—well, no one wanted the Chosen sleeping in the village itself.

  Breaker shuddered as they made their way across the compound yard to the guesthouses, not at the habits of the local ler, nor at the memory of Stoneslope or the prospect of confronting the Wizard Lord in a battle to the death, but merely at the feel of his environment; the air in this place was cool and dead. The village’s ler not only did not trouble sleeping visitors here, they did not enter at all, and sealed the area off from any other spirits that might seep in. As a result the entire compound was lifeless and inert; the dirt underfoot was bare and packed hard, unbroken by any trace of green. The air was still; the half-dozen little cottages were dull and dim, with no bright colors nor the slightest glint of light. Breaker had never before experienced lifeless surroundings, and he did not like the sensation—or rather, the eerie lack of sensation—at all.

  “I wonder whether the Wizard Lord can hear us here,” the Archer said.

  “Probably,” Breaker said, trying to distract himself. “Isn’t a wizard’s magic independent of place?”

  “But still, he works his will by commanding ler, like any priest or wizard, and there are no ler here.”

  “There are ler here,” the Scholar corrected. “There are the ler we brought in with us, the ler bound to us by the talismans of the Chosen. And the Wizard Lord can send his ler here, as well.”

  “We might notice them a little more easily,” the Seer said. “There are no others to confuse the matter.”

  “I see no sign of them,” the Archer said.

  “I hear almost nothing,” the Speaker said, looking about with the calmest expression that Breaker had ever seen on her face, plainly visible even in the faint moonlight. “This place is so quiet. No plants speak, the earth is silent . . .”

  “It’s a dead place,” the Seer said.

  “Yes. I love it,” the Speaker said. “I have a small place at home that is sealed away and lifeless, but it’s smaller, and the voices from outside can still be heard faintly. Here it’s so quiet! I have been here before, but not for some time, and I had forgotten how pleasant it is.”

  “Pleasant? It’s . . . it’s dreadful,” the Seer said, as she reached the door of the first guesthouse and stopped.

  “It’s strange, certainly,” Breaker said, stepping up to the second doorway.

  “And it’s irrelevant, isn’t it?” the Archer asked, as he neared the third. “Can we get down to business now?”

  “Business?” the Scholar asked, pausing between Breaker and the Archer. “Do we have business to attend to?”

  “Don’t we?” the Archer asked. “I thought you four wanted to discuss whether or not to kill the Wizard Lord—and how to go about it.”

  “He has to die,” the Seer said. “He destroyed an entire town. But we can’t act without all eight of us, so there’s no need to discuss anything until we find Boss, and the Thief, and the Beauty.”

  “Why do we need all eight?” the Archer asked. “There are five of us here; if we all agree then that’s a majority, and we can get on with it.”

  “We need the Leader, at the very least,” the Scholar said. “After all, he’s meant to lead us.”

  “We must all agree,” the Seer said.

  “Why?” the Archer insisted.

  “The Old Swordsman didn’t tell me we needed to be unanimous,” Breaker agreed.

  “If there are only five, the Wizard Lord can kill us all and still have enough magic to rule,” the Seer said.

  “Can he?” the Archer asked.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s certain,” the Scholar said. “We don’t have much precedent, since every previous Dark Lord who slew any of the Chosen was removed from power soon afterward.
If he killed us, the remaining Chosen and the Council of Immortals would certainly want to remove him, and powerful as the Wizard Lord is, I don’t know that he could defeat the entire Council with a mere three-eighths of his magic available.”

  “Are we all agreed that he must die, though?”

  “I take it that young Sword told you about Stoneslope?” the Seer said.

  “He did—not that it really matters; I’ve been willing to kill this Wizard Lord for years, just on general principles. I became the world’s greatest archer to slay Dark Lords, not just to win wagers.”

  “We’ll see what Boss says,” the Seer replied. “If he thinks six of us are enough then we’ll go without the Thief or the Beauty, but I want the Leader to guide us, to devise our approach. I don’t want to just walk into the Wizard Lord’s stronghold and say, ‘Hello, we’ve come to kill you.’ I want a plan.”

  “When he sticks his face out of his tower I could put an arrow through his eye from a nice safe distance,” the Archer said. “How’s that for a plan?”

  “A little rudimentary,” the Scholar said. “What constitutes a safe distance with a wizard whose power extends over all of Barokan?”

  “We’ll talk to the Leader,” the Seer said.

  “You know, you aren’t Boss,” the Archer said. “You’re the eldest here, but all the same, you’re not in charge. What if the rest of us don’t want to take the time to find him?”

  “He’s in the Midlands,” the Seer said. “It’s not that far.”

  “But why should we bother? Why not go straight to the Wizard Lord now, before he has time to prepare?”

  “He’s had five years to prepare. He must have known when he destroyed Stoneslope that we would find out and come after him eventually. We need to prepare as much as we can.”

  “You’re scared,” the Archer said, pointing a finger at the Seer.

  For a moment no one spoke; then the Seer said, “Of course I’m scared—I felt the terror his victims felt in Stoneslope, and some of it stayed with me. And even without that, I’d be scared. If you weren’t a fool you would be, too. We’re planning to kill the Wizard Lord, Bow. To kill a man—that’s a grave responsibility to begin with, and this particular man is dangerous and powerful. We saw what he did to Stoneslope, and it was horrific—you have no idea how bad it was. Yes, if he kills us he’ll be terrifically weakened, and he’ll be slain anyway, but he may not care—he may kill us anyway. He’s mad, he must be, to do what he did to his own hometown, and that means he may not have the sense to not kill us. If he has any sense he’ll abdicate, give up the talismans and tell the Council to choose a new Wizard Lord, and retire, and if he did that we would have to let him live—and I pray to all the ler that he does that, and soon, so that we don’t have to fight him.”

  “You’re giving him time to realize it’s hopeless,” Breaker said.

  “Yes, I am—that, and I do want Boss to help us. He’s the Chosen Leader—he has magic, just like the rest of us, but his magic is in planning and scheming and improvising, persuading people to help us and directing our attack. I want that magic on our side, to give us every advantage we can get. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to kill anyone if I don’t need to, either.”

  “The third, fourth, and seventh Dark Lords all retired peacefully when confronted with their sins and failures,” the Scholar said. “Our current lord hasn’t chosen that path yet, but it really would be better for all concerned if he did.”

  “It would be even better if you people just went home and dropped this whole mission,” a high-pitched, inhuman voice said; Breaker started, and looked down to see an immense rat sitting up on its haunches by the corner of the nearest guesthouse. “I’m not going to hurt anyone else who doesn’t deserve it; all my old enemies are already dead.”

  “So you say now,” the Seer said. “Get away, and let us talk!” She swung her walking stick at the rat, which dodged and vanished into the shadows between houses.

  “How much did he hear?” Breaker asked, worried.

  “Not much,” the Seer said. “He manifested in that rat just as you said I was giving him time to see it’s hopeless.”

  “Is he gone now?”

  “Yes. For the moment.”

  “He’s not going to surrender peacefully,” the Archer said. “I vote we go kill him as quickly as we can, and get it over with.”

  “And I say we need the Leader’s magic,” the Seer replied. “I vote we go to the Midlands and find Boss.”

  “Lore?” the Archer said, turning to the Scholar.

  “I think he may yet see reason,” the Scholar said. “I vote with the Seer.”

  “There is no reason to see,” the Speaker said, startling Breaker. “Kill him now.”

  “The deciding vote is yours, Sword,” the Seer said, turning to Breaker.

  “I . . .” Breaker hesitated, looking at the Archer and the Speaker. This was his chance to get on with it, to get it over with sooner—but it didn’t feel right. Perhaps the Leader’s presence would remedy that. He turned back to the Seer. “I think we should find the Leader. What you say about his magic—that’s true and important. We should talk to him before we rush in.”

  “Three to two,” the Scholar said.

  “I hope you won’t do anything foolish, like going in alone,” the Seer said to the Archer.

  The Archer sighed. “No,” he said. “I’ll behave. But no dawdling—tomorrow we head for the Midlands by the fastest route, agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “And so to bed,” the Scholar said. “Let us get as much sleep as we can before we go!”

  “I’ll miss this place,” the Speaker said. Then she stepped back and vanished into one of the guesthouses.

  A moment later all five had gone to their separate beds, and the only sign of life in the lerless compound was a lone rat, sniffing at the foundations of the Seer’s chosen shelter.

  Breaker’s dreams that night were vague and jumbled, unguided by ler, but he awoke with a fading memory of the bone-strewn hillside in Stoneslope and was unusually quiet for much of the morning.

  [19]

  They made good time on their northward journey, but to little initial avail; to their extreme annoyance the Seer reported one morning, as they marched across a broad and peaceful meadow behind a taciturn guide, that the Leader had packed up and headed east, moving farther away.

  “What does that idiot think he’s doing?” the Archer complained.

  “He probably has no idea we’re looking for him,” the Seer said. “After all, how could he know? And better to the east than into the western marshes, or out to the islands.”

  “He can’t go too far,” Breaker said. “Not to the east—he’ll reach the cliffs.”

  “Is there any way we can tell him we need to talk to him?” the Archer asked. “The way the Speaker sent me that message, perhaps?”

  “I don’t know of anything I can—no, be still—I don’t know of any spirit I might convince to go so far,” the Speaker said. “Even if I spoke a bird’s true name, the compulsion would not last long enough to cover such a distance.” She was walking ahead of the other four Chosen, close behind their hired guide, with her head down; every so often she started as some part of the surrounding landscape spoke to her, unheard by the others.

  “Perhaps we could find a wizard who could fly a message to him?” the Scholar suggested.

  “There are no wizards any closer to us than Boss is,” the Seer reported.

  “But isn’t there some way we can contact them magically?” Breaker asked.

  “I tried, days ago,” the Seer said. “I had a talisman that was supposed to summon a wizard I know. No response.”

  “We have to go as far as Winterhome to find the Beauty anyway, don’t we?” Breaker asked. “He won’t go any farther than that, will he?”

  “You mean up on the plateau, above the cliffs?” The Seer shrugged. “I can’t imagine why he would. If he does, though, we can’t follow him—ou
r magic won’t work outside Varagan.”

  “We could follow him,” the Scholar said. “We’d just need to use more mundane methods.”

  “I don’t know anything about tracking,” the Seer said. “Do you?”

  “Well, a little,” the Scholar said. “It does come up in certain stories, of course.”

  “Why would he go somewhere his magic doesn’t work?” the Archer asked. “He won’t go up the cliffs.”

  “We’ll probably catch up with him in Winterhome,” Breaker said. “And the Beauty, too.”

  “You’re really looking forward to getting a look at her, aren’t you?” the Archer asked, grinning. He jabbed Breaker with an elbow as the two of them drew slightly ahead of the Scholar and the Seer. “Well, maybe we will, and maybe it’ll be worth it. We’ll see.”

  “I’d like to see what she looks like, of course,” Breaker agreed, as he trudged onward, “but mostly I want to get on with business. We need to remove the Wizard Lord, and the Seer says we can’t do that without the Leader.”

  The Archer glanced back over his shoulder, then leaned closer and said quietly, “You know, we don’t need to do what the Seer says. We could turn around right now, just the two of us, and go kill the bastard. We don’t need to go all the way to Winterhome just so Boss can tell us what we already know.”

  Breaker glanced at their guide, wondering if the bent little man had heard the Archer’s words. “He’d see us coming, and probably kill us both,” the Swordsman said. “The Seer is right about that.”

  “We aren’t that easy to kill.”

  “We aren’t wizards, either. I agree he needs to be removed, but I’d like to survive the process.”

  “But we’re the Chosen! He won’t kill us—it would destroy his magic.”

  Breaker sighed, and picked up his pace—he thought he would prefer the guide’s company to the Archer’s, and in any case the group was becoming uncomfortably spread out. “He’s a human being—or at least he used to be, I suppose it’s not quite so certain anymore, but he still acts like one. If he’s got a choice between being killed right now, or giving up his magic and living a while longer and maybe talking his way out of it altogether—well, I don’t expect him to stand there playing target.”