The Ninth Talisman

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  He spent most of those four days observing the Wizard Lord, talking with Lore, exploring the palace, or simply leaning on the terrace rail, staring down at his homeland.

  He practiced his swordsmanship for an hour each day, even though he was fairly certain it was not magically required of him here in the Uplands. He had definitely lost some of his skill, and the sword often seemed heavy and awkward in his hand, but he could still wield the weapon effectively. On those occasions when other people happened to see him in action, they seemed quite impressed; he knew he had lost much of his speed and dexterity, but apparently it wasn’t obvious to the casual observer.

  He made sure to keep his silver talisman, the Talisman of Blades, with him at all times, even though it now seemed nothing but a lifeless bit of metal. It would not do to get into any dangerous habits.

  He also spent a good part of each day just looking at the Uplands. That vast, flat expanse, utterly devoid of any perceptible spirit, did not seem entirely real. The occasional flock of ara did not make it any less fantastic, nor did the rare glimpses of the Uplanders in the distance, stalking the giant birds or moving their tents from one spot to another or doing whatever it was they did with those strange frameworks of theirs. Streaks of smoke from their campfires straggled up the eastern sky on the calmer days, but calm days were few. On most days winds whistled through the grass and around the palace eaves. The weather was much cooler than Sword was accustomed to in summer, and the nights were downright chilly.

  But then, that was one reason for putting the Summer Palace up here in the first place—to escape the heat and humidity of the lowlands.

  His diet was rather different than it had been back home. Uplander traders had sold the Wizard Lord what appeared to be several tons of ara meat, smoked or salted or dried, and a large quantity of ara eggs, which the palace cooks used in a variety of interesting ways. Sword had never eaten ara before, and did not particularly like it at first, but soon found himself acquiring a taste for the stuff.

  Although a goodly stock of food and other necessities had been laid in before the Wizard Lord moved his household, a steady stream of supplies and messengers trickled up the trail from Barokan, bringing news and perishables. The haulers and messengers generally stayed only a single night before heading back down, so that each morning saw a procession trudging out, and every afternoon found new arrivals appearing from the valley as if rising out of the earth itself.

  As promised, Sword became accustomed to the thinner air after a day or two. Adjusting to the absence of his magic took longer; after four days he still felt weak and slow and hollow, even though he was once again breathing normally, and the psychic emptiness was growing worse, not better.

  And on the fourth day he asked himself what he was doing there. He had come to Winterhome to talk to the Wizard Lord, to see whether the Lord of Winterhome needed to be removed, and he had done that. The man was different from any previous Wizard Lord, doing new and strange things, but there was no evidence he meant any harm or wished anyone ill, no sign he had any intention of violating any of the rules that bound him. In fact, all his efforts seemed to be directed toward improving the lot of the people of Barokan. He spoke of little else, so far as Sword could determine.

  “I’m going home,” Sword said to himself on that fourth afternoon, as he stared over the terrace railing at Longvale. “I belong down there, not up here.”

  There were crops to grow, back in Mad Oak. There were repairs to be made. His family was down there.

  His magic was down there.

  At supper that night he told the Scholar and the Wizard Lord that he was going home to Mad Oak. Artil made a few polite objections, but no serious argument against Sword’s decision; Sword thought he was secretly relieved to be rid of the man who might one day kill him.

  Lore said nothing; he merely nodded. Sword found that oddly irritating, but did not bother to question the Scholar; he felt too tired, too dull, to press the matter.

  The following morning, while the sun was still low on the eastern horizon, Sword walked out the palace gate, his pack on his back, bound for the road down to Barokan.

  He stared out across the plateau as he made his way to the head of the canyon, taking in that vast emptiness, and the strangeness of a sun so low in the sky, with no cliffs to ascend before shining on him. A strong wind whipped his hair across his face as he walked, which added nothing to his enjoyment of the journey. High winds were common up here, and he wondered idly whether that had anything to do with the thinner air—perhaps some of the air blew away?

  He turned west into the canyon and marched on, ducking his head to gain the shelter of the canyon walls that much sooner.

  But as he finally neared the foot of the canyon, Sword hesitated. He knew that he was about to cross back into Barokan, and was unsure what it would feel like. He reached into his pocket and touched the talisman there, while his other hand closed on the hilt of his sword. Although there was no boundary shrine nor any other marker, he could sense that the border was just ahead. He could feel the ler, for the first time since he had passed the other way.

  He remembered that day when he had first become the Chosen Swordsman; the rush of sensation had been so overwhelming he had passed out. He doubted that it would be so extreme this time, since he had, after all, spent seven years in the role, but he had no idea what it would feel like.

  “I suppose I’m about to find out,” he murmured to himself. Then, moving slowly and deliberately, he stepped forward.

  The numinous rush of magic swept through him; the talisman suddenly burned hot in his hand, and he could feel the cold, feral power of the ler in his sword’s hilt. The emptiness he had felt was suddenly filled, and the world before him, the land of Barokan spread out below the cliffs, was somehow richer, more real, and infinitely more familiar and welcoming than it had been a moment before. He was a part of it again.

  “Oh,” he said, as he sat down suddenly on the stony trail, overcome by the experience.

  That void in his heart had been much larger than he realized. He wondered how he could possibly have not felt, for the past few days, just what he was missing by being separated from his magic and the ler of Barokan. By comparison with what he felt now, it was as if he had been dead.

  There really weren’t any words to do the experience justice.

  He sat for a long moment, relishing it, but at last he got to his feet, brushed himself off, and marched on down the path toward Barokan.

  When at last he clambered down the final stretch of trail leading to the arch in the Winter Palace’s wall, the air of Winterhome seemed oppressively heavy, hot and thick, but even so, Sword thought it preferable to the cool, clean winds of the Uplands. He felt more alive here. He hadn’t realized how different his very existence had been in the Summer Palace, how drab and empty. He had thought that the thin air had been responsible for much of his malaise, but now he knew that was nothing. What he had really done was to forget what his life in Barokan felt like.

  But now he remembered; now he felt it anew.

  He could hear voices beyond the arch; in fact, he had been hearing their murmur for some time. He had also seen, all the way from the mouth of the canyon, that the plaza was crowded with people and wagons. Apparently he had chosen a market day for his return, when the farmers and tradespeople brought their wares to be sold.

  He took a deep breath, and stepped through the arch into the plaza at Winterhome’s heart, into the crowds and bustle, so utterly different from the quiet calm of the Summer Palace. He smiled at startled Host People who turned to stare at his sudden appearance; then he turned his steps north.

  His plans were simple; he thought Beauty would probably be willing to share her roof for the night, and in the morning he would head on up toward Longvale. In a few days he would be home. He had long since missed the last of the spring planting, but with any luck at all he would be back in Mad Oak in time to do his full share at harvest.

  He look
ed up at the Summer Palace, perched atop the cliff.

  The Wizard Lord was still up there; so was Lore. Sword did not entirely understand how they could tolerate being cut off from their magic, and had to assume that it was somehow different for them than it had been for him.

  Well, that was no surprise; they were not much like him in other ways, either.

  He looked around at the people of Winterhome, and noticed that their clothes were not quite what he had remembered; the men’s cuffs and ankles were not bound up tightly, but fairly loose. The women’s garb seemed thinner than he recalled, the scarves not as effective in hiding the faces.

  He doubted that they had changed in just four days; he simply hadn’t looked closely before. His attention had been on the Wizard Lord, on the other inhabitants of the palace, and on the Chosen, not on the ordinary people of the town.

  There were several people in the crowd not wearing the unrelieved black of the Host People at all—travelers, presumably, far more of them than Sword had ever seen in one place before, and clad in a wide variety of attire. The Wizard Lord’s roads had presumably brought them in, and ordinarily Sword might have found them fascinating, but just now he was interested in the variations in what the Host People wore. These lighter, looser clothes were clearly adaptations to the summer heat, which he had to admit was unusually fierce. He thought it really had gotten noticeably hotter during his brief absence. He wondered whether the Wizard Lord had known this heat was coming, and whether that might have contributed to his decision to build his airy cliff-top retreat.

  Or might the Wizard Lord be responsible for the heat? After all, he did have fairly extensive control over the weather.

  But why would he do that? It made no sense. It was probably just a coincidence that Barokan was so hot just now. It might not last, in any case; in a few days it might be pleasant and cool.

  Sword was not going to wait around to see if the weather improved, though. He wanted to get home. He took a few steps, then glanced at the merchant’s cart he was passing and stopped in his tracks.

  “Ah, I see you’ve noticed my merchandise!” a man said cheerfully. His accent was nothing like the Winterhome lilt, and it finally registered with Sword that many of the merchants in the plaza, rather than the customers, were the ones not wearing Host People garb. This man, a portly fellow a few years past Sword’s own age, wore a purple-and-gold vest over a fine white shirt, despite the heat; Sword suspected that this bright clothing might be a deliberate advertisement. The man’s cart was half-full of the most brilliantly dyed fabrics Sword had ever seen.

  He could not immediately identify all the fabrics, either. He knew wool and various hides and felts, which were the standard materials in the vales, and he was familiar with linen and cotton from his travels in the Midlands and the southern hills, but there were bolts of cloth here that were like nothing he had seen before.

  “What is that?” he asked, pointing at a shimmering blue fabric.

  “Fine silk, from the southern coast. Never seen it before, have you? Beautiful stuff, isn’t it? It’s been traded up and down the coasts and is-lands for a hundred years, but never brought this far inland until now.”

  “ ‘Silk’?”

  “And this is cashmere. That’s velvet, and chiffon . . .”

  Sword stared. The materials were almost dreamlike in their beauty, and in the variety of textures. He reached out and touched the burgundy-colored stuff the merchant called “velvet,” and marveled at the feel of it. He knew that he was unnaturally sensitive just now because of his recent reconnection with the ler of Barokan, but even so, he thought this fabric was almost magical.

  “But it’s not black,” he said, as he pulled back his hand. “What would anyone here in Winterhome want with it?”

  The merchant smiled, leaned forward, and whispered, “You don’t know what they wear in their own homes, do you? Or what the women wear under those tents of theirs?” Then he straightened up and said, “Not to mention curtains and cushions and the like. But to be honest, you have a point. You’ll notice that my cart is half-empty, and I haven’t a stitch of black material left in it. What you see here is what remains after selling everything suitable for the Host People’s tailors and seamstresses. If you look around, I think you’ll see a few women with chiffon scarves.”

  At that, Sword realized that he had indeed already noticed those scarves; some of the Host People women were not merely adapting to the heat, but showing off their new finery.

  The very concept of a Hostwoman showing off finery took a little getting used to, but as Sword glanced around at the crowd it really did seem to be the case.

  “I can see you aren’t a Hostman,” the merchant said. “So even with the black fabric gone, perhaps I can sell you a pretty little something for your lady?”

  “I don’t have one,” Sword said, turning away. It was not so much that he wanted to get away from the cloth merchant as that he wanted to look at the other goods on display.

  “No one you’d like to give a bit of finery?” the merchant persisted, leaning around Sword’s shoulder as he held out a scrap of shimmering fabric.

  “No one,” Sword said, as he stared at the bushels of unfamiliar grain in a nearby wagon.

  The wagon’s proprietor noticed his gaze. “Fine rice, from the coastal marshes,” he said. “Boil it for a few moments, and you have a fine meal. Good with any meat, or any of these sauces . . .” He gestured at a rack of bottles.

  Sword nodded silently, then moved away and looked at the next wagon, and the next.

  Salts and spices, strange fruits, unfamiliar foods of every sort, carvings in exotic woods and rare stones—Sword had never seen anything like this marketplace. The new roads had obviously brought a flood of new merchandise. He strolled slowly through the plaza, taking it all in. He listened to the merchants hawking their wares and talking among themselves, and heard a dozen accents he did not recognize, and two or three unknown languages.

  And the Host People were buying eagerly. Clearly, the Wizard Lord’s roads had brought welcome changes here. Sword remembered what the road crew back in Mad Oak had said, that the Priest-King of Willowbank had been unhappy about the roads until the first caravan arrived, but that had been enough to sway him; apparently that was not an unusual reaction. The Host People were obviously thrilled with this bounty. A few priests might have headaches and stomach cramps, and plenty of ler had been dislodged, but the roads would appear to be very popular indeed.

  He glanced up at the Summer Palace, perched on the cliff’s edge. Did Artil know what he had accomplished here? Did he realize how successful at least one of his schemes had been?

  He probably did; surely, this sort of market hadn’t sprung up over the past four days. Sword’s own brief prior passage through Winterhome had not happened to coincide with any market days, but this level of trade had probably been developing for years.

  Sword looked around at the market, at the smiling merchants and laughing customers, at the Host People women in their new chiffon scarves, their children eating exotic candies. They seemed happy, and he had rarely seen anyone in Winterhome openly happy.

  Artil had done this. Artil had brightened all these lives, transformed an entire population.

  Sword really hoped he would never have any reason to kill the man who had brought such a change about.

  He certainly had no reason now. The Wizard Lord had done no wrong, which meant there was no need for the Chosen. It was time to go home. He hoisted his pack back into place and began trudging northward.

  As he neared the edge of the plaza, though, he slowed, then stopped.

  He had been traveling for weeks, and there was no reason to return home empty-handed; he could bring his mother a little something, at the very least. He turned to look at the merchants’ wagons.

  An hour later he headed north again, with his pack a little fuller.

  The Beauty did not answer his knock, to his surprise; he debated waiting for her return, b
ut decided against it—she might be anywhere, might not return for days or months. Instead he walked on, leaving Winterhome behind, and slept that night in a guesthouse on the edge of the town of Shadetrees. He was utterly exhausted by the time he reached it, and had spared not a moment for a glance at the town.

  In the morning, though, he discovered that the roads had brought exotic goods here, just as they had to Winterhome. Oh, the selection was far less impressive in this smaller community, but it was still a bit shocking to Sword. He browsed a little, then made the expected obeisance at the town’s temple and continued on his way north.

  By the time he reached Broadpool the shock had worn off. Every village now seemed to have merchants peddling their wares from carts and wagons, selling things as mundane as raisins and as exotic as silk brocade, or as strange as sea creatures resembling nothing Sword had ever seen before, pickled in spiced vinegar. He could not imagine what the creatures were intended for; it wasn’t until he heard the vendor explaining how to cook them that he realized they were food.

  After Broadpool he continued on, through Rock Bridge and Willow bank, until he finally arrived home in Mad Oak, only to find that even in his hometown traders were exchanging spices and seashells for beer and barley.

  And everywhere, the buyers expressed their admiration for the Wizard Lord who had made this possible. Everywhere, Sword was greeted with comments, ranging from lighthearted jests to dead-serious admonitions, to the effect that he had better not kill this one as he had the last. A few priests still grumbled about headaches and indigestion, and bemoaned the confusion and dismay of the ler, and some women chattered about nightmares even as they looked through the merchants’ wares, but everyone else was openly delighted by the new roads and the commerce and freedom they brought.

  Sword noticed that the roads had already become more welcoming; the dizziness and disorientation he had felt when he first headed south were almost entirely gone. The ler had settled into their new arrangements, aided by the passage of dozens of travelers.