The Summer Palace

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  He would probably never know. If he somehow survived this winter, and killed Artil im Salthir, and returned to Barokan a free man, he might want to visit Split Reed and ask.

  Or perhaps he would be happier not knowing. If he had somehow ruined their lives, did he really want to be told?

  He might never know what had happened to many people whose lives he had affected, many of them in far more direct ways. What had become of the Beauty, or the Archer, or the Thief? He had lost all contact with them after fleeing from the slaughter in Winter-home. Were any of them still alive?

  Snatcher had probably escaped. He was, after all, the world’s greatest thief, the master of stealth and disguise, able to defeat almost any lock or bar. He was probably still free, somewhere down in Barokan. He might be infiltrating the Wizard Lord’s guard even now. He might have already cut the Wizard Lord’s throat, for all Sword knew.

  More likely, though, he was hiding in some obscure coastal village, waiting for his comrades to do the dirty work.

  Bow had probably tried to kill the Wizard Lord. He had always wanted to, to go down in legend as the first Archer to do so. But Sword doubted he had succeeded; Artil had always kept the possibility in mind, and would have taken precautions against getting shot. In fact, he would have done everything he could to see Bow dead.

  Which did not mean Bow was dead, any more than Sword was, but Sword had no idea where he could be and still be alive. At sea somewhere, perhaps?

  As for the Beauty, Sword was unsure what the Wizard Lord might think of her, but he certainly didn’t think she would try to kill anyone on her own. If she had friends supporting her, perhaps, but not on her own. She had probably simply gone into hiding somewhere—and she had spent much of her life more or less in hiding, so she would probably do a good job of it.

  As he lay on his mattress waiting for sleep, Sword thought about the Beauty—and wished he hadn’t. There was nothing abstract about her beauty; like his ability with a sword, it had a direct and simple purpose. His skill let him kill people; her magical beauty was intended to provoke lust in any normal adult male who saw her. Men would do what she asked, would let her distract them, because they desired her, plain and simple.

  That magic did not work on her fellow Chosen, but she had been chosen in the first place because that magic had plenty to work with. Sword had not been so overcome as other men would be, but for that very reason she had allowed him to see her face often, and to sometimes glimpse more. He had been alone for months, and before that he had been among Uplanders whose women did not consider him suitable for their attentions; the memory of Beauty’s face and voice was anything but relaxing. Sleep would not come easily while he thought about her. The curve of her cheek, the flow of her hair . . .

  He wondered what she was doing. Hiding, yes—but where? Doing what? Was she alone? Had she found women who would help her, women she could trust, women who would not be envious of her appearance?

  Or had she used her magic to get men to aid her? What had it cost her, if she had?

  He tried to stop thinking about it, but he couldn’t make his imagination let go. Was she safe? Had she been forced into some horrible situation by the combination of her magic and the Wizard Lord’s search for the remaining Chosen?

  If he survived and returned to Barokan, Sword told himself, finding the Beauty and making sure she was safe and well was far more important than any visit to Split Reed to see what had become of the Dark Lord’s maidservants.

  He had hoped, years ago, that his friendship with Beauty might develop into something more; she had told him to stop being silly, that she was much too old for him. He wondered whether she would still think so, now that they had both lived a little longer. The eighteen-year difference had seemed huge when he was only twenty or so, but it didn’t appear quite so important now.

  And once the Wizard Lord was dead, they would both still have their magic, magic that made them curiosities, almost outcasts. He had to practice his swordsmanship for an hour every day, and had to live with the odd combination of fear and fascination that most people felt toward someone chosen to be a killer, while Beauty could not go out in public with her face uncovered without risking rape or riot; why not share their burdens, rather than bear them alone?

  Sword admitted he did not actually love Beauty, in the way the old songs described it, or the way he had seen some of his townsfolk moon after one another, but she was a fine person, and of course, even though he was immune to the magical exaggeration, she was very, very beautiful.

  Why shouldn’t they make a marriage of convenience? Not everyone married for love.

  But that assumed she was still alive, and that he would survive this winter and somehow kill the Wizard Lord, and right now that didn’t seem very likely. He was probably more likely to starve to death than to ever marry the Beauty.

  But still, he couldn’t help remembering her face and voice, and imagining what it might be like to share her bed.

  His stomach growled, and for once thinking about food was a welcome distraction, at least at first. He was able to fall asleep, at any rate.

  In the days that followed he thought about Beauty and the others several times. He wondered what had become of Boss and Lore. The Wizard Lord had almost certainly tried to keep Boss alive, since her death would have rendered his own Talisman of Glory inert and made it that much more difficult for him to recruit supporters and demand obedience, but had he succeeded? Sword thought it was possible, if unlikely, that she might have chosen suicide over continued captivity. Artil claimed he did not need magic, but was it true? If the Leader was dead, and the Wizard Lord’s own persuasive magic gone, would the people of Barokan still follow Artil? Would his army still obey him?

  Sword reluctantly concluded that yes, they would—after all, centuries of habit aside, this was the ruler who had built roads and canals and bridges that made trade easy, who had slain monsters and dispersed hauntings and made Barokan safer.

  He didn’t need magic.

  Boss would almost certainly realize that, so suicide did not seem likely at all.

  And despite his claims to want an end to magic, Sword did not think Artil would throw away the power of the Talisman of Glory by killing her; he would prefer having that power in reserve. After all, if he had wanted Boss dead, he could have killed her in the first place, rather than taking her prisoner at all.

  Was Lore essential to Artil’s plans? Sword was quite certain that the Scholar would never consider suicide, that his mind simply didn’t operate that way, but might Artil have decided to discard Lore after a certain point?

  Probably not, but Sword could not be sure. Certainly, the Wizard Lord had no qualms about killing some of the Chosen. Sword remembered very well how the Seer and the Speaker had died. At least two were dead, and it might be more.

  In the very worst case, Artil might have killed all the Chosen except Sword.

  And presumably, except the mysterious ninth member of the Chosen, whoever and whatever that might be, if the ninth even existed.

  Sword wondered about that—which was a welcome distraction from thoughts of food, or memories of the Beauty’s curves. What might a ninth role be? A male equivalent of the Beauty, perhaps? A Hider, like the Seer but in reverse, who could conceal things from the Wizard Lord? But that was nothing that ara feathers couldn’t accomplish, so it seemed unlikely, unless the power included invisibility. That would be useful.

  Might the ninth be something to do with names or spirits? But Sword could not think of any role there that the Speaker did not already fill. A Healer? The Beauty’s magic did include some modest healing ability, but more might have been useful. A Poisoner, perhaps? But Lore’s knowledge and the Speaker’s abilities should have provided the Chosen with all the poisons they needed, which the Beauty or the Thief might administer.

  A Flyer, to bring things quickly from one place to another? Someone who could hear the Wizard Lord’s thoughts, and know what he was planning? Sword had no
idea whether that would be possible, but it would certainly be useful.

  But if any of these existed, why hadn’t any of the eight Chosen known about it? Why hadn’t this ninth come to join them? That made Sword think that there was no ninth—but then, why had the wizards given Artil that talisman, and told him there was a ninth? The more Sword thought about it, the more convinced he became that it was all an elaborate bluff, an attempt to keep the Wizard Lord in line by making him think he had a mysterious, undetectable foe watching him.

  If so, it had backfired horribly, by prompting Artil im Salthir to order most of the Council of Immortals slain. And that, in turn, had led to the Wizard Lord attempting to destroy the Chosen.

  If it was all a lie, then some would-be trickster among the wizards had effectively destroyed the foundation of Barokanese society with his little ploy, because Sword could not see how the old system could survive with so many wizards dead.

  Not that that was necessarily a bad thing. Artil wanted to destroy the old system by removing the Chosen and the Council of Immortals, but keep the role of Wizard Lord for himself, while Sword thought that if the old system was going to go, then all of it should go. He intended to kill the Wizard Lord if he could.

  But with each meal, it seemed less likely that he could.

  Finally, one day as Sword knelt in the tunnel and let the spirits guide the poker in his hand, and when it had become unmistakable that the tunnel had turned upward, something spoke.

  There are roots beneath the snow. The people who planted them did not take them all. The snows came before they could.

  “What?”

  Your body is not meant to live on nothing but meat and cheese.

  “It’s food. It’s what I have.” He hacked at the stone again, jabbing the poker into a crevice, and a chunk cracked and fell free, tumbling down the sloping floor past his foot.

  It is not enough. We can guide your steps as we guide your hands.

  “Can you?” Sword looked up at the stone above him, though he knew the ler weren’t any more present there than anywhere else. “To one of the Uplander gardens?”

  Yes.

  “And what would you want in return?”

  For a moment there was no reply; then the words came.

  If we keep you alive, you must use that life for us. You must serve our ends.

  “What, enslave myself?” He hacked at the stone again. “I don’t think so.”

  Your life will remain your own wherever that does not harm us.

  “I don’t . . .” Sword stopped to think, and the poker slipped from his clumsy fingers. He looked down at it, and when he lowered his head his vision swam, and he thought for a moment he might faint.

  He knelt motionless for a long moment, trying to gather his thoughts and his strength, and after a time—a time he was unable to judge—he realized he had little to gather.

  “All right,” he said. “All right, then. I swear I’ll help you when I can, if it doesn’t mean doing anything I think is wrong, or not doing something I think I should. Now, lead me to this food.”

  As you wish.

  The wind was cold and howled around the palace eaves as Sword stepped out onto the terrace half an hour later, but it dropped as he stumbled away from the door. He pulled his velvet drapery cloak and a couple of blankets more tightly around himself as he looked up at the sky and demanded, “Now what?”

  There were no words, but the wind pressed at him, and he turned, trying to shelter his face, and found himself facing the palace gate.

  “All right,” he muttered. Then he shuddered, and set out.

  Almost two hours later he reached down into the hole he had dug in the snow and chipped at the frozen ground with the knife he had brought, trying to free the half-grown and thoroughly frozen turnip he had exposed.

  It came up at last, and he moved on quickly to the next spot the ler indicated—by now, rather than using wind to guide him, a faint golden glow was leading him to the precise location of each vegetable.

  He worked at chipping vegetables from the hard earth for as long as the daylight allowed; the first clan garden yielded a surprisingly large harvest, but not enough, and as the sun sank toward the cliff-edge in the west he moved on to a second garden.

  When the sun vanished below the cliffs and the sky turned to fading gold he gathered up his precious finds and headed back toward the palace, floundering through the snow. By the time he staggered down the kitchen stairs the layer of ice on his beard and mustache was easily half an inch thick, his eyebrows were frosted thick with ice as well, and his fingers were trembling despite being numb with cold, but he held an armful of frozen carrots, turnips, beets, radishes, and vegetables whose exact nature he could not name—a feast, it seemed to him, even though every one of his prizes was undersized or severely misshapen.

  That was probably why the Uplanders had left them, he thought—these hadn’t been overlooked so much as rejected.

  But he didn’t care. He was in no position to reject anything edible.

  Working only by a faint polychrome glow of ler, it took what seemed like an eternity to get a fire burning; his frozen hands could not readily manage the necessary actions. More than once he had to bend stiff, reluctant fingers around a tool or a scrap of wood with his teeth before he could maneuver it into place. Even then, his hands shook so badly that he was not always able to maintain his hold.

  At last, though, orange flame flickered up dimly, then caught and spread. The gentle warmth sent a ferocious prickling through his skin as he began to thaw, and cold water trickled down his neck from the melting ice in his beard.

  For about an hour he didn’t try to do anything but warm up. The numbness passed, the ice melted, the uncontrollable shivering came and went, and finally he simply lay on his mattress, a few feet from the fire, feeling himself relax.

  And when he had relaxed enough, he arose and sorted through his still-cold booty, then made himself dinner.

  It was astonishing how wonderful a radish tasted after months of nothing but meat, cheese, and water—even a small, bitter radish felt cold and sharp and clean in his mouth, like a flash of early springtime, and helped make yet another scrap of leathery jerky seem edible.

  In better times, he thought he could have eaten the entire collection of vegetables in two or three meals; with his shrunken stomach he could easily make them last for weeks, filling out his last bits of jerky and cheese.

  He completed the tunnel eleven days later; when he thrust the poker up into the wall where the glow of ler indicated, a shower of stone and dirt crumbled in on him, as had often happened before, but this time there was snow mixed in. Blinding sunlight and freezing wind burst in on him, and he tumbled backward, blinking madly in the bright light of a cloudless winter afternoon.

  When he had recovered somewhat, he turned and peered shivering out the opening, then thrust himself forward, despite the cold and glare, to see where he was.

  The tunnel had emerged in a rocky area just beyond the outer walls, northeast of the palace, out of sight of every window, well away from the top of the canyon.

  It was perfect. The outside entrance would be hidden by the wall and the rocks, and he could see no reason anyone would ever wander into that area and find it, while the inside end was in the back of a storage cellar, and could easily be hidden by pushing a few stones back into place and setting a shelf or two in front of them. He had his secret way in and out of the palace.

  It wasn’t straight; instead it twisted and wound through the earth, following the natural shape of the stone and earth. And it wasn’t finished. He still had a month or more before the ara returned, and he intended to clean out the debris, widen the narrow spots, and shore up the weak ones, so that his underground passage would be easier and more convenient. But it was open from end to end.

  He sat in the hole among the rocks, shivering as he looked out at the snow-covered landscape. He had not been dressed for the cold of the outside world, since generally wor
king in the tunnel had been close work, and his exertions had been more than enough to keep him warm.

  When he had thrust his fireplace poker upward, to be greeted by that shower of rocks and snow, the dirt, snow, and wind had put out his candle. That was going to make the trip back through the tunnel to the cellars that much more interesting, as he doubted he could strike a fresh light in the wind.

  He had enlarged the opening just enough to climb out and see where he was, and had then slid back down, out of the worst of the cold.

  After the initial shock, though, he realized that the wind didn’t feel quite so cold as usual. Yes, he was shivering, but he was out in the open without his cloak, without any blankets, yet he was not going numb, and no ice had formed in his beard.

  “Is it warmer today?” he asked.

  No answer came.

  That didn’t mean anything; the ler answered when they chose, and said nothing when they chose, and he had no way to coax or compel them.

  Warmer or not, it was still cold; he took one last look, then ducked back down into the tunnel and started back toward the palace cellars, finding his way by feel, by the faint glimmer of daylight that leaked in behind him, and by the occasional faint flicker from ler.

  [ 17 ]

  One day, as he leapt up onto a couch brandishing his sword, just to prove to himself that he could still leap, Sword glanced out a nearby window just in time to see a glittering drop of meltwater fall from the tip of one of the great icicles that hung from the palace eaves.

  He stopped, balanced on the arm of the couch, blade upraised, and stared.

  Another drip fell, sparkling in the morning sun.

  “It’s melting?” he asked. He lowered the sword, his daily practice forgotten for the moment.