The Wizard Lord

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “But five years!”

  “Are you worried about the ghosts of the dead that cannot rest until they’re avenged?” the Archer asked. “I’ve heard that they aren’t really aware of the passage of time.”

  “I don’t . . .” Breaker began, but then he was interrupted by a shove at his elbow. He turned to see a plump woman heaving a large, heavily loaded tray onto the table.

  “Your supper,” she said.

  “At last!” the Archer said, and for the next twenty minutes no one mentioned Dark Lords or rogue wizards; for the most part the conversation was limited to requests to have one food or another handed over or replenished.

  The Beauty took her dinner to a room upstairs, to eat in private; the Archer watched her go, but then, resigned to not yet seeing her face, returned his attention to the meal.

  [27]

  Few townspeople appeared at the inn that evening; although the rain had stopped the wind still howled through the muddy streets, and few cared to venture out in such conditions. Those who did appear did not intrude on the party of strangers. Thus the six of them—seven, when the Beauty emerged again from her room—were able to discuss and plan.

  “We can expect storms every inch of the way,” the Leader said, “and I, for one, don’t want to slog through them the way we did today. We need a wagon. A covered one that will keep the rain off.”

  “Solidly enclosed, I would say,” the Archer said. “A cloth covering will be blown away or flogged to pieces.”

  “Good point—yes, a good solid wagon, all wood.”

  “What will lightning do to a wooden wagon?” Breaker asked.

  The Leader frowned, then looked at the Scholar.

  “Lightning can shatter trees, or set them afire,” the Scholar said. “I’d suppose it can do the same to a wooden wagon.”

  “What can we do about it?”

  The Scholar hesitated. “I’m not sure,” he said. “There are a few very old stories—I suppose they must be true, since I remember them, but I don’t know what they mean. One speaks of a thing called a ‘lightning rod,’ made of copper or iron, but I don’t know what one would look like, or how it would work, or how we could make it.”

  “Metal?” the Speaker asked.

  Startled, the Scholar turned. “Yes, metal.”

  “But metal draws lightning, it doesn’t keep it away.”

  “Does it? How?” the Leader asked.

  The Speaker looked confused, then turned to the empty air and murmured gibberish for a moment, then cocked her head as if listening. The others waited.

  At last, she spoke.

  “Lightning is . . . not a fluid, but something that behaves somewhat like a fluid. It seeks the ground, as water seeks to flow downward. To lightning, the air is like sand is to water—it seeps through it by the easiest route, though a thousand thousand times faster than water through sand. And metal—to lightning, metal is a hole in the sand, a hole in the air. The ler of lightning will seek out metal as a path through the air, a shortcut to the ground.”

  “Oh, but then a lightning rod is easy to understand!” the Scholar said enthusiastically. “A metal rod reaching from above the wagon down to the ground will draw the lightning through it, and it will all pass through so quickly it won’t have time to harm the wood!”

  “The sand around a hole still gets wet when you pour water in the hole,” the Leader said doubtfully.

  “But only the water close to the hole! If we set our lightning rods out on iron brackets, along either side of the wagon, then we should be safe.”

  “I suppose it won’t hurt to try it,” the Leader said. “Of course, it will take some time to construct such a thing.” He considered, then asked, “Does anyone see a better alternative?”

  No one did.

  Their manner of transport settled, they then discussed routes, and whether or not to hire guides.

  “The Speaker can speak to ler,” Breaker pointed out. “And we are all supposed to be immune to much of the magic we meet. We don’t need guides anymore.”

  “But guides do more than speak,” the Seer protested. “They know the safe routes, and ways to appease the dangers.”

  “We will not be crossing wilderness,” Breaker said. “We came here from the Galbek Hills, and the paths were mostly well-worn and clearly visible, with no grave dangers to dissuade. We made do without a guide to and from Stoneslope. I think we can manage to find our way without endangering any more guides.”

  “Would we be endangering them?” the Leader asked. “This lightning cage the Scholar proposes should make our wagon safe for anyone, not just us.”

  “How well can they guide us from inside a wagon?” the Archer asked. “Besides, as Sword says, we don’t need them.”

  “We got here without one,” Breaker said. “At least, for half the distance.”

  “And we don’t know how well the cage will work,” the Scholar said. “Devices do not always behave as expected.”

  “Let us try the next leg of our journey without a guide,” the Beauty said. “At least until we know whether this magical cage works. If we encounter unexpected difficulties on the road, we will know better next time.”

  “Agreed,” the Leader said. “We will try it unguided, and see how we fare. After all, we are the Chosen!”

  Although he had been arguing for exactly that, Breaker was not particularly happy at the Leader’s words—he was all too aware that merely being the Chosen did not mean they would win out, or that they would all survive. He worried that they would become overconfident.

  But then he remembered the long, weary slog through the rain, lightning flickering around them, thunder echoing dully, mud sucking at their boots. They could hardly be overconfident in such conditions; it was only here in the inn, safe and dry, that they were regaining their self-assurance.

  He thought the Wizard Lord could be counted on to provide them with reminders of their own fallibility.

  The planning and plotting continued well into the night; at one point the Seer warned them that the Wizard Lord was listening in through the innkeeper’s cat, and they shifted the focus of their discussion for a time.

  And finally, not long before midnight, they found their way to their two rooms.

  In the morning they set about implementing their schemes—a wagon and oxen were bought, a smith hired to construct a protective cage. Wind howled through the streets constantly, but rain only fell when one or another of the Chosen was out in the open.

  The wagon was stocked, supplies laid in, while the cage was built; the project used almost the smith’s entire supply of iron and took three days to complete, but at last the wagon stood ready.

  Breaker looked at it with mixed feelings.

  The wagon itself was nothing very special—a large unpainted wooden box on four sturdy wheels, a bench at the front, drawn by four oxen. The metal lightning cage, however, gave it a strange and mechanical appearance. Four long metal rods stood a foot out from either side, mounted on iron brackets, and extending from two feet above the top of the wagon to a few inches from the ground; two more were mounted at the front, another pair at the back, making a dozen in all. Because the Scholar had been uncertain what would be most effective, half the rods were iron, and half were copper, alternating. Iron scrollwork formed a protective web above the top of the wagon, connecting all twelve, and chains dangled from the bottom of each rod, dragging on the ground.

  “How much does that weigh?” he asked.

  “A great deal,” the Leader said. “We may need more oxen, especially in the mud—but let us try it as it is and see how we fare.”

  Breaker nodded.

  At dawn the next day they boarded the wagon; the Archer claimed to know how to drive a team of oxen, so he took his place on the bench while the other six climbed into the cramped interior and settled onto the boxes of supplies that served as seats. The Leader lit a small and distressingly smoky lantern and hung it from a hook in the ceiling—the wagon had no windows,
as no one had thought them necessary, and the light that leaked in around the Archer’s back was gray and unsatisfying. Rain drummed heavily on the roof.

  Then the Archer shook the reins and called “Hyaah!,” and with a jerk, the heavy contraption started forward.

  They had scarcely left Riversedge when the first rumble of thunder sounded—at first Breaker had taken it for the cart’s wheels rolling over something, or something shifting in the wagon, but then it sounded again and he knew. He glanced out at the Archer’s back, hunched against the rain.

  “How close is it?” he called.

  “Flickers on the horizon,” the Archer replied. “And we need to put an overhang on this thing—I’m getting soaked!”

  “We’ll do it at our next stop, then,” Breaker said. “You’ll survive one day, won’t you?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Breaker felt a moment’s guilt that the Archer was working in the rain, while he was safe and dry—albeit crowded and likely to get bruised from banging against wooden boxes as the wagon bumped along. “I’ll take a turn later, if you show me how,” he said.

  “I’ll . . .” the Archer began, but then a sudden flash blinded them both for a moment, and half a second later a crash of thunder broke over them.

  “Closer,” Breaker said.

  “Just ahead,” the Archer told him. “I saw it.”

  It occurred to Breaker for the first time that the Wizard Lord didn’t need to hit them, or their wagon, to slow them down—if he were to knock down trees and block the road, that would certainly delay them, though it might not stop them.

  He didn’t say anything, however, for fear the Wizard Lord might be listening. The Seer hadn’t mentioned the Wizard Lord’s presence, but Breaker was not at all certain she always noticed it.

  And then another flash came, and a blast of thunder simultaneously shook the wagon, which jolted and slowed, but did not stop; the Beauty shrieked, and the Leader cursed, and Breaker heard a strange crackling. He had been looking out at the rain when the flash came, and now he found himself blinking at pink afterimages of the Archer’s silhouette; his ears were ringing. He did not resist when the Leader pushed him aside and barked, “What happened?”

  The Archer’s voice was little more than a croak as he replied, “The cage works.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. Keep going!”

  “Yes, sir.” Breaker heard the Archer calling to the oxen, but the wagon did not seem to pick up any speed.

  And then another bolt of lightning crashed, deafeningly close, and the Archer screamed. The wagon jerked to a halt.

  “What?” the Leader demanded. “What happened?”

  Breaker thrust himself forward, close beside the Leader, as they both heard the Archer cursing elaborately.

  “What is it?” Breaker called.

  “The cage doesn’t cover the oxen,” the Archer called back, as he clambered from the bench. “One of them is down.”

  “Oh, by the black ler . . .” The Leader and Breaker both climbed out, and a moment later Breaker found himself slogging through mud in the torrential rain, helping the Archer cut the smoking carcass of a dead ox from the yoke and traces, while the Leader calmed the three surviving animals and held them back.

  “It barely hit his nose,” the Archer said as they worked. “I don’t think he could get the lightning any closer.”

  “If we mount a metal bar above the yoke, leading back to the cage, then?”

  “That should work, so far as I can see. We’ll ask the Scholar and the Speaker.”

  “Can three oxen pull the wagon?”

  The Archer glanced at the terrified beasts. “I don’t know,” he said.

  Breaker glanced back along the path; even in the downpour he could still see Riversedge. They had come only a few hundred yards. “We could go on . . .”

  “And if we try,” the Leader said, leaning forward and shouting to be heard over the driving rain, “and he kills another ox, it’ll be that much harder to get to shelter. No, we go back and mount a bar, as the Archer said, and get another ox. Then we press on.”

  “I hate to . . .” Breaker began.

  “We don’t really have a choice,” the Leader said. “We can’t risk another ox. We go back.”

  “Agreed,” the Archer shouted.

  Reluctantly, Breaker admitted that they had a point. When the last leather strap snapped free he began tugging the remaining lead ox’s head around, getting the wagon headed back whence it had come.

  The innkeeper was not happy to see them.

  “Get out!” he bellowed, shaking with rage or fear. “Get out, and take this unnatural weather with you!”

  “We would like nothing better,” the Leader answered, “but the Wizard Lord has seen to it that we can’t depart until certain matters have been attended to.”

  It took most of the day to install a long horizontal bar extending out from the wagon, but the Speaker assured them that it would indeed protect their draft animals—all six, as the Chosen took this opportunity to enlarge their team. They stayed one more night in Riversedge, and set out anew in the morning.

  Once again, the rain was constant and drenching; the path beneath their wheels was usually inches deep in either mud or water, and lightning cracked and flashed around them.

  The protective cage served its intended purpose, though; any lightning bolt that came close was drawn harmlessly through the metal into the ground. Sparks showered, and Breaker felt his hair stand on end, but no real harm was done. The wood around the supporting bolts did get slightly charred over time, and that strange magical smell—“ozone,” the Scholar called it—followed them like a woman’s perfume.

  They had gone several miles before the Wizard Lord finally thought to attempt what Breaker had been expecting all along, and bring a tree down across their route. Breaker, the Archer, and the Leader managed to lever it out of the way eventually, but the delay cost them the better part of an hour—and of course the Wizard Lord repeated it half a mile later.

  As a result they didn’t reach the next town until well after dark, and the entire party was filthy, soaking wet, exhausted, half-deafened, and very, very angry.

  “If he really wants us to turn back,” Breaker said, as they unhitched the oxen for the night, “he’s not going about it effectively. Irritating us with these stupid delays is just annoying, not discouraging.”

  “At least he’s abandoned the ‘Oh, I’m really harmless,’ nonsense,” the Archer said.

  “These delays may be to give him time to prepare for us,” the Leader suggested. “He may be setting traps of some sort.”

  “Oh, there’s a cheerful thought!” said the Archer.

  The Leader shrugged. “It’s a possibility.”

  Breaker didn’t argue, but he wondered whether the Wizard Lord’s blockades would really make any difference. Yes, they had to waste time clearing them away, but they had still reached the next town in a single day—just much later in the day. And the time the Wizard Lord might have saved was probably devoted to casting weather spells and steering lightning bolts and so on, rather than setting traps. If this was to be the pattern for the rest of the journey, they would reach the Wizard Lord’s tower on the same day as they would have anyway.

  They would be far less well-rested and far more annoyed, though. That might make a difference in itself.

  Still, if this was all the Wizard Lord had to throw at them, they would indeed reach the tower and kill its master.

  He, the Swordsman, would presumably kill the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills.

  Breaker remembered his mother’s words and the expression on her face when she asked, “You want to be a killer?”

  He shuddered at the memory—and he hoped the Archer would put an arrow or two in the Wizard Lord’s chest before anyone got close enough to draw a blade.

  Nonetheless, after their late, cold, and tasteless supper, Breaker still attended
to his required hour of practice.

  [28]

  The night sky was cloudy, but no rain fell—why would the Wizard Lord waste water when the Chosen were all safely indoors? Wind rattled the shutters, though, and whistled around the eaves. Tired as he was, Breaker lay awake listening to it for what seemed like hours before finally dropping off to sleep.

  As a result he awoke stiff and foul-tempered in the morning. He did his share of the preparations for departure, but contributed little beyond grunts to the accompanying conversation.

  It did not help his mood at all when the renewed storm broke and rain pelted down before they even had the oxen out of their rented stalls.

  At last, though, they got out of the village, rolling west and south across open country—which meant no downed trees serving as road blocks. That brightened Breaker’s morning, and as his mood improved his weariness caught up with him. He dozed off in a corner of the wagon.

  He was awakened by a sudden jarring and a crash; startled, he rolled from his niche and scrambled to the front of the still-moving wagon.

  The air outside smelled of ozone, and Breaker saw that they had found their way into a patch of woods—and of course, the Wizard Lord had taken the opportunity to drop a tree across their path, a few yards ahead.

  The Archer was reining in the oxen, preparing to stop; the Leader crouched in the wagon’s doorway, ready to jump out and lend a hand in heaving the fallen timber aside.

  Breaker sighed. “Again?” he said.

  “I’m afraid so,” the Leader said. “Nothing to do but get on with it, though—are you ready?”

  “Ready enough,” Breaker said.

  The wagon slowed to a stop, and the Leader heaved himself through the opening; Breaker followed close behind. A moment later, when the wagon was secured, the Archer joined them.

  The air was thick with confused ler, as well as rain—but they did not seem hostile; in fact, Breaker realized, as he splashed toward the fallen tree, that he had not felt any real hostility from any ler in any of the wilderness they had crossed since leaving Winterhome. Branches did not slap at his face, nor the ground make him stumble. Instead the ler seemed to be hanging back, watching them, making room for them. It appeared that nature itself preferred to let the Chosen pass unmolested, despite the Wizard Lord’s efforts. That was heartening, and Breaker smiled as he followed Boss through the torrents.