“Me?”
“You—you’re the Leader. We aren’t going to tell them what happened here—there’s no reason to. You and I escaped the trap together, and we killed him. Why should we say anything else?”
“Yes, yes! Of course. We don’t . . . I don’t want any trouble . . .”
“One year,” Breaker said. “No more. And sooner would be better.”
Then he knelt and wiped the blood from his sword on the Wizard Lord’s robe.
[34]
Breaker dragged the Wizard Lord’s corpse down the stairs, to prove to the maids that he was dead; once they saw the remains, somewhat battered by the none-too-gentle descent, they were eager to cooperate. The Archer was freed, and an hour later the seven Chosen were reunited on the hillside by the wagon.
Breaker and Boss gave no details of what happened, merely said that the Leader had distracted the Wizard Lord and the Swordsman had then killed him.
The Beauty noticed how subdued the Leader was, and looked questioningly at Breaker.
“He saw something,” Breaker said. “Something the Wizard Lord did before we killed him; I don’t know exactly what.”
“I can’t believe it’s over,” the Archer said.
“It’s not,” the Scholar said. “Not quite. Now we need to find his talismans, and take them back to the Council of Immortals. We each carry our own talisman’s mate—no one else can handle them safely.”
“What about the Thief’s?” Breaker asked.
“It stays here until the new Wizard Lord comes to claim it, I suppose. Just as the talisman would if one of us had died.”
“The new Wizard Lord?”
“Yes, of course—the Council will choose a new one as soon as they know this one’s dead.”
“Why?”
A sudden silence fell as the other six all stared at Breaker.
“What do you mean, why?” the Seer asked.
“Why should we have a new Wizard Lord? You all saw how much damage a bad one can do—why should we help them set up another?”
“We don’t have much choice,” the Scholar said mildly. “They’ll do it whether we want it or not.”
“To control the weather and kill rogue wizards,” the Beauty said.
“But there haven’t been any rogue wizards in years—in centuries!” Breaker protested. “And the weather can manage itself.”
“It’s not our decision,” the Scholar said. “It’s up to the Council.”
“But why?”
“That’s just the way it’s always been.”
Breaker stared at him, baffled, then turned and stalked away.
A moment later, as he sat on a rock staring out across the hills, the Beauty came up and sat down beside him. She said nothing at first, but she pulled the scarf from her face, and flung back her hood.
He turned and looked at her fully and directly for the first time, at her heart-shaped face, her lush auburn hair shining in the late afternoon sun; she was unquestionably the most beautiful woman, the most beautiful creature, he had ever seen. He felt a stirring in his loins as her scent reached him—no perfume, but simply the smell of a clean, healthy woman.
“Was it bad?” she asked. “Killing him?”
“It was quick,” Breaker replied. “That’s not the problem, not really.”
“He killed dozens of people—is that it?”
“Hundreds, maybe. Yes.”
“But without a Wizard Lord, wild lightning might kill just as many—crops could fail, floods wash people away, storms sink fishing boats . . .”
“But . . . it’s not the same. That’s not deliberate. It’s not evil.”
“The people would be just as dead.”
“I suppose.”
“We can tell the Council we think they should reconsider,” she suggested.
“We can, yes,” Breaker agreed. “We will.” He hesitated, unsure what to say, not wanting to tell the truth, then rose. “Let’s go find those talismans.”
They did not find the talismans, but the maids did, as they cleaned the Wizard Lord’s body—all eight were sewn onto a leather belt the dead man wore beneath his faded robe. No one had any difficulty in identifying which one to remove, as each matched the talisman one of the Chosen already carried. Breaker pulled the silver blade from the belt, ripping it loose without bothering to sever the threads that held it, and watched as the Archer took the golden arrow, the Beauty the silver mirror, the Seer the crystal orb.
The Leader hesitated, his hand hovering over the golden crown; he looked at Breaker.
“Take it,” Breaker said, and Boss obeyed.
The wounded Babble had to be helped over to the cooling corpse to collect the vaguely tongue-shaped garnet, and the Scholar waited until last to retrieve the tiny rune-carved stone tablet.
That left an iron key, which clearly represented the Thief. Breaker prodded it experimentally, and found that his fingers could not close on it, and any touch left his fingertips bleeding from dozens of tiny cuts.
“She’ll need to come and fetch it,” he said, putting his bleeding fingers in his mouth.
The others nodded, and they left the Wizard Lord’s body to his maids.
They stayed the night at the tower, the maids waiting on them as if they were mighty lords, and the next morning, as they were readying the wagon for departure and idly debating whether they should bother tearing off the lightning cage to lighten the oxen’s burden, the wizards began to arrive.
The first came by air, of course—an old man Breaker had never seen before. The winds that carried him alerted the Chosen to his approach, as they suddenly howled and whistled from a clear sky; Breaker and the others looked up from where they stood to see the wizard sailing over the hills, and a moment later he stumbled to the snowy ground a dozen yards from the wagon.
No one moved to aid him. Breaker felt a twinge of shame at that, an old man on one knee in the snow and no one rushing to help him up, but on the other hand—this was a wizard. This was a member of the Council of Immortals that had sent them to kill the Wizard Lord, and had given them no assistance whatsoever. No one had given them much help, but the wizards least of all.
This man had magic that could carry him as fast as the wind, but he had let the Chosen struggle for weeks through endless seas of mud and slush. No wizards had offered to carry the Chosen to the Galbek Hills, nor to shield them from the Wizard Lord’s storms.
Let the old man stand up on his own, Breaker thought.
The wizard righted himself, brushed the snow from his black robe, and called, “Congratulations!”
“You’re welcome,” Breaker said coldly.
The wizard blinked, then smiled. “Yes, of course, thank you! Thank you all for freeing us from that madman! Well done, well done!”
“Do you know what you’re talking about?” the Archer asked. “Why do you call him a madman?”
The wizard was stepping gingerly toward them, holding the hem of his robe up out of the slush and wet snow; he looked up from his feet. “Wasn’t he? From the damage he did to the towns along your route, I could scarcely think otherwise.”
“He was mad,” Breaker said. “As you say, he could scarcely be otherwise. And when did you first realize this?”
The wizard looked puzzled, and stopped walking. “Me? Oh, perhaps a fortnight back.”
Breaker marveled to himself at that; their slow and miserable journey from Winterhome had taken over a month, but this wizard had noticed nothing wrong until two weeks ago.
“Yet you did nothing about it?”
“Well, no,” the wizard said. “That was your job—if I had opposed him, he would have killed me.”
“Was there nothing you could have done to aid us, to ease our path, to hinder his plans?”
“Not without risking his anger, Swordsman—that’s why the Council created the Chosen in the first place, all those centuries ago!”
“And what about our risks?”
“You agreed to those when y
ou agreed to be Chosen!”
“I was told that we would be acting with the Council, not in its stead, if it ever became necessary to remove a Wizard Lord!”
“Oh. Well, that’s not how it actually worked, was it? It’s certainly not how I understood the situation. But in any case, it’s over, and he’s dead, and I’m sure we’re all very proud of you. How did you know he was mad?”
“He murdered an entire town,” the Seer said. “His own childhood home, a place called Stoneslope.”
“Someone will need to go there and placate the dead,” the Scholar said. “Take his head to show them, that should do it.”
“Ah, and perhaps you . . .”
“That is not what we were chosen for,” the Beauty snapped, pulling down the scarf that had covered her mouth, the better to shout. “You can fly—you do it.”
“Ah—well, I’m sure something can be arranged, when the others get here.”
“Others are coming, then?” Breaker asked.
“Oh, yes,” the wizard said. “All of us, the entire Council.” He pointed skyward. “Here’s the next one, now.”
And sure enough, a red speck was swooping nearer, one that Breaker soon recognized as the man the people of Mad Oak had called the Red Wizard—and he was carrying someone, a woman.
“That’s very nice,” Breaker said. “Enjoy your meeting. We’ll be going now.”
“No, no! You must stay—you must pass on the talismans to the new Wizard Lord.”
Breaker exchanged glances with the others—though the Leader’s gaze flicked away quickly, then fell to the ground.
“How long will this take?” the Scholar asked.
“Oh, not long. A day or two at most.”
Breaker sighed.
“A day or two, then,” he agreed.
Over the next few hours several more wizards arrived, and Breaker recognized six of them—he had seen four of them less than a year ago, when he dueled the Old Swordsman, and the other two had accompanied the old man when he first arrived in Mad Oak. Half a dozen of the wizards flew in, but some of those were carrying other, nonflying wizards. Two arrived on foot, one traveling at a normal pace, the other somehow walking so fast his legs were a blur of motion; one arrived on monsterback, and three on various more normal beasts of burden.
In all, nineteen wizards converged on the dead Wizard Lord’s tower, there in the Galbek Hills, by nightfall.
Breaker watched them arrive, watched them greet each other, and stared at the ones he recognized from Mad Oak.
Had it really been less than a year since they saw him jab the Old Swordsman in the shoulder? It hardly seemed possible, but he knew it was—the duel had been late in the last winter, and this winter was still young.
During one of the lulls between arrivals Breaker became aware that the Leader was trying to get his attention; he turned and said, “What is it?”
“Could we speak in private, Sword?”
Breaker did not want to talk to the man, but he could see no graceful way to avoid it; he sighed, adjusted the sword on his belt, and accompanied the Leader for a walk, away from the tower and the wagon, up across the next hill. When they were out of sight of the others, both wizards and Chosen, Breaker stopped.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“We need to discuss what happened. These wizards—they’ll want details, and our stories must match.”
Breaker stared at him for a moment, then asked, “How long did the two of you conspire together?”
Boss swallowed. “Five or six years,” he said. “Ever since the massacre in Stoneslope.”
“So you knew what he had done.”
“Yes, I knew—though I didn’t know it was as bad as you and the others say it was. The Seer told me there had been killing, and I came here and talked to the Wizard Lord, and he told me all about it, and asked what I was going to do, and I saw my opportunity.”
“Opportunity? A hundred men, women, and children slaughtered, and you saw an opportunity?”
“Yes, I did! Go ahead and be self-righteous if you want, Sword, but those people were already dead, and I saw that I had a chance to do something new, to make us rich and powerful. Don’t you see?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Look at it—the first Council was so frightened of power that they deliberately set up a system to prevent anyone from using it freely. The Wizard Lord restrains the Council, the Chosen restrain the Wizard Lord, and the Council restrains the Chosen, and nothing gets done—each little town goes on about its business in its own individual way, and Barokan stays a patchwork of priesthoods. But if two of the three sides were to join forces, think what we could accomplish!”
“What?”
Boss stammered, then said, “Anything! Don’t you see?”
“No.”
“Well, I do, and I did from the moment I became the Leader. I didn’t find a way to bring it up with the old Wizard Lord in Spilled Basket, but this one—I got to know him a little, and then when he got his nasty little revenge I realized I had a hold on him, and something to offer him, and I agreed to lie to the Seer about the killings in exchange for his help. Together we would rule Barokan outright, not just in the limited way the Wizard Lord usually does—I would keep the rest of you from interfering with him, or if I couldn’t I would help him capture you, and in exchange he would use his magic to help me get whatever I wanted. With my own magic, my persuasive powers, and his knowledge of true names, I could have anything I wanted. I have a palace back in Doublefall, Erren, a palace, with a dozen beautiful slave girls waiting on me hand and foot.”
He paused, as if expecting Breaker to say something, but Breaker merely looked at him. Boss sighed.
“I tried to sound out the others about joining me—I talked to Lore about whether any of the Chosen were ever rich and powerful, and tried to hint that we could be the same, but he didn’t see it. I didn’t dare speak too openly, you understand. I think the Seer guessed what I was getting at, but she was too frightened to give it any real consideration. I couldn’t find Stealth or Beauty—the Seer wouldn’t help me—and I thought Babble had gone mad, with those voices of hers. And when I talked to Blade, before I could bring it up he started talking about how he didn’t trust the Wizard Lord. So I gave up the idea of including the rest of you, and kept it just the two of us. Then when the Seer started collecting the Chosen I left home so you wouldn’t see my palace and leap to any conclusions, and I headed to Winterhome to try to find the Beauty to convince her to back me up, but I couldn’t locate her. I talked to the Wizard Lord, and we made some plans, but . . .”
“But I killed your partner. Fine, I see how it was, but it’s over. You’ll give up your talisman, and without your magic I suppose your slave girls will flee and you’ll lose your palace. I don’t care. I’m not going to kill you or tell anyone about it—though it wouldn’t surprise me if Babble already knows what happened, or if the Seer guesses.”
“But it doesn’t have to be like that! When they choose the new Wizard Lord, we could talk to him . . .”
“No.”
“But you could have anything you want . . . !”
“No. I swore an oath, and took a place among the Chosen, and I am not going to pervert that. And neither are you, not again. You’re going to pass on the role of Leader.”
“But . . .”
“No.” His hand closed on the hilt of his sword.
Boss slumped.
“Have it your way, then,” he said. “We still need to get our story straight.”
Breaker frowned. “It’s simple enough. After we agreed to go down to the cellars you heard a noise above, but you could not get my attention, or the Archer’s, so you bravely and foolishly went to investigate by yourself, and found the Wizard Lord. You tried to use your persuasive powers to talk him into resigning peacefully, but he refused, and just then I came up the stairs, found you, heard his refusal, and killed him. How else could it have been?”
“How else?�
� The Leader sighed deeply. “Of course that’s how it was.”
“Shall we rejoin the others, then?”
“Of course.”
And they did.
[35]
When the nineteenth wizard arrived, with the sun skimming the western horizon and the maids lighting torches, a tall woman in blue announced, “We are all gathered, then. Let the Council of Immortals be convened!”
“Out here in the cold?” a young wizard protested, but the others ignored him. Some had scattered across the hillside or wandered into the tower, but now they returned, and collected themselves in a rough circle around a campfire.
The Chosen were clustered around their wagon twenty yards away, watching this with varying degrees of interest. Breaker simply wanted them to get it over with, so that he could start the long walk home, but Lore was fascinated by the whole thing, the Seer was nervous about it . . .
The wizards had been speaking for only a few minutes when they all turned, as if called, to face the wagon.
“Will the Chosen please come forth, to tell us what befell them?” the blue-robed wizard called.
With varying degrees of enthusiasm the seven made their way to the Council’s circle; the Speaker hobbling on a crutch the Scholar had improvised. The wizards parted to make way for them, and one quickly arranged a folding chair for the wounded Speaker.
“There are only seven,” a wizard called. “Did Laquar kill one?”
“We kept the Thief in reserve,” the Leader said. “We . . .”
“She refused to come,” Breaker interrupted. “She should be replaced.”
The other Chosen turned, startled, to look at him. “I thought we . . .” the Beauty began.
“I’ve had enough of deceit and evasion,” Breaker said. “The Thief betrayed us and refused to come. The Seer, too, though she led us at first and came far, balked at the last moment, and should retire, as well.”
“I would be happy to retire,” the Seer said. “The Swordsman is right—my nerve failed me, and I am no longer fit for my role. I have seen too much as it is.” She stepped toward the fire, and dropped two little orbs on the rocky ground near the flames.
The Wizard Lord Page 37