The Summer Palace

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

In his half-starved state he had become resigned to the idea that he would probably not survive the winter, the promises he had made to himself while out on the snow that moonlit night notwithstanding. His supply of jerky was gone; only a sliver of cheese remained; in three trips he had stripped bare every garden that the Uplanders themselves had not cleaned out, and had nothing left of his harvest but three half-rotten beets and a shriveled carrot. He had lost track of the days, and the ler had not spoken to him lately, but until this very moment the snow and ice outside had seemed as permanent as the stone on which the palace was built.

  He had considered taking another look at finding a way down the cliffs to Winterhome, thinking he had little left to lose, but even assuming he could somehow get down the icy trail, he was more likely to be killed at the bottom than fed. Better, he thought, to die up here, so that Artil could not be sure he was dead, than to let the Wizard Lord know he had triumphed.

  Of course, that would mean he would want to leave the palace, go somewhere his body wouldn’t be found, while he still had the strength to do so, and he had been thinking about that, in a rather desultory fashion, but had not yet decided on a definite course of action.

  The belief that he was going to die a slow and horrible death from hunger had been oddly liberating; he no longer worried about maintaining any sort of pattern to his days, or minimizing the damage he did to the palace and its furnishings. He had tried to stretch his food supply as much out of habit as any real hope of staying alive until spring, but had stopped keeping track of how much remained, or how many days he had been here.

  But now the icicles were melting.

  He jumped down from the couch and crossed to the window, staring out.

  “It is melting!” he announced; the surface of the nearest icicle was slick and wet, glistening in the sun. He looked around, and realized that the film of frost on the inside of the glass was retreating, as well. He touched the windowpane; it was wet.

  The evidence had been around him all morning, he realized, but he had not noticed it. He had very little energy these days, and did not devote much of it to observing his surroundings. Now, though, he could see signs of melting everywhere.

  “It’s real,” he said. He looked up. “Is this spring, or just a freak thaw?”

  The birds are returning, adults and hatchlings. They are less than a hundred miles south of this place.

  “The ara?”

  The sun has been coming north for many days, but we were able to hold off the warmth until the birds approached.

  “So it’s spring? Spring is coming?” Sword stared out the window.

  He had made it after all—or at least, he knew he could. He had lost a great deal of weight, he was gaunt and weak, but he was not actually dying yet.

  The birds are coming. We will hold them as far from this place as we can. . . .

  “What? No! I need them! What am I supposed to eat?”

  Go to them, if you will.

  “I will! I . . .” He looked around, trying to think. He would need weapons, and tinder. . . .

  And his coat, the one with feathers sewn into it. His makeshift velvet cloak was too bulky and clumsy for hunting, and Whistler had thought feathers helped to keep ara from sensing the hunters’ approach.

  “A hundred miles?”

  Less.

  That was at least five days’ journey—perhaps less in good weather, but the plains were still deeply covered with snow—and that was assuming he could find them readily. He could not rely on the ler to guide him, not once he retrieved his feathers.

  “Are they coming nearer?”

  There was no answer. Sword stared out the window, watching water drip, seeing the sun glinting from the ice.

  “When will the Uplanders return? How do they know where to find the ara?”

  Again, he received no reply.

  Well, if the Upland ler wouldn’t help him, he would just have to rely on himself. He had done that often enough before, after all.

  But there was no need to rush off precipitously. His sword practice forgotten, he headed thoughtfully for the stairs.

  Three days later he set out to the southwest, hunting ara. He had not eaten for two of the three days, after finishing the last crumb of cheese and the last of the vegetables. The ler had not spoken to him at all in those three days; he was unsure whether this was simply their usual perversity, or whether the proximity of the ara was affecting them.

  Certainly, the weather had abruptly turned warmer. The snow was melting rapidly, and he had been startled a few times by the sound of shattering as oversized icicles lost their grip on the palace eaves. The thaw was happening with astonishing speed.

  He wondered how long it would be before the Uplanders came back up from Winterhome. He had gone out on the terrace and peered over the cliff, trying to judge whether spring was coming to Barokan as suddenly as it was arriving up on the plateau, but he had been unable to tell. The trail had still been hopelessly iced over, but there was certainly less snow down there in the towns below than there had been—he could see chimneys and exposed bits of roof where only white had shown before. He could not readily estimate how much less, though.

  It didn’t matter, he told himself as he trudged southward through the snow and slush; he would need to fend for himself for a time, but he could manage that. He could hunt ara himself. He had his spear, he had ropes, and his sword, and all the other supplies he thought he would need. He had even made himself a small tent; it had kept him busy after the tunnel was completed, and had been one more thing to keep his mind off his hunger.

  For the first time it occurred to him that it might have been clever to have practiced with his spear as well as with the sword, but he had not done so, and it was too late now.

  He was leaving the Summer Palace a mess, with half the furnishings torn up and burned, and the remains of his camp in the kitchens, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. The Wizard Lord would know someone had been there, certainly, but he would not know for certain who, or whether he had survived or wandered out to die in the snow.

  His only worry in that regard was that Artil might decide not to bother cleaning up the mess. He might give up his summer home and stay down in Barokan, where he belonged—and where Sword had no real hope of getting at him.

  If that happened, though, Sword had totally misjudged the Wizard Lord’s character. He did not think for a minute that Artil would ever give up anything without a fight.

  He might not come up this summer, though. He might let the repairs take a year. If that happened, Sword would need to spend another winter in there, and he doubted Artil would make that easy. There would be no wheel of cheese next time, no easily burned furniture, no water in the cistern.

  But Sword didn’t think that would happen. He thought Artil would make a point of using the Summer Palace this year, no matter how damaged. He would not let the Chosen be seen to have inconvenienced him.

  There would be workmen, then. Perhaps Sword could slip inside as one of them, and await the Wizard Lord. He knew the palace very well indeed now, after his months there, and thought he might be able to find safe places to hide.

  He knew the structure, but of course, he didn’t know the people—their numbers, their habits, their routine. That would make hiding a challenge.

  But he could think about that later. Right now, he needed to find some ara.

  He had found the Uplanders the previous year by following their smoke, but of course, birds didn’t have campfires. Surely, though, there was some way to locate them. He scanned the horizon, squinting against the glare of sun on snow.

  There was nothing immediately obvious.

  He marched on, heading south and east, until sunset, when he made camp. He built himself a campfire from the limbs of a nearby tree; even though the sap was not yet running, the wood was damp and green, and getting the fire started took almost an hour. The result was a low, smoky fire that snapped and spat constantly.

  If there was an
yone else anywhere on this vast plain, he thought, they would be able to find him from a hundred miles away by following that smoke.

  He had no food left, none at all; he resisted the temptation to chew on tree bark, since he did not recognize the species of tree and knew some bark was toxic. He did not care to have survived the long, cold winter only to succumb to accidental poisoning. He was able to melt snow in a stolen saucepan for drinking water, but there was nothing he could do for his gnawing hunger. He was used to it by now, but even so, it still hurt.

  On the fourth day after leaving the palace he suddenly understood how to find a flock of ara, and wondered why it had taken him so long to realize it. The snow was vanishing rapidly, but it was not gone, and even where patches of bare ground showed through, it was not hard-packed turf that was revealed, but mud.

  And where hundreds of man-sized birds had run across the plain, the snow was churned into muddy slush, leaving a trail a blind idiot could easily follow. Sword turned his steps to the north again, following the broad swath of cold muck, and the sun was still above the cliffs when he spotted the ara ahead.

  Hunting ara, he discovered, was much more difficult alone than with a partner, and being weak and tired did not help. Hunger and desperation, though, did help, and with rope and spear, one end of the rope tied to a scraggly tree, at last he managed to bring down a smallish male, which he quickly beheaded with his sword.

  The rest of the ara fled, of course, and Sword let them go. He had more meat here than he could eat in several days, and it would be easy enough to follow the flock’s trail. He stood over the dead bird, exhausted, panting, sweaty despite the still-cool air; the smell of blood and death was simultaneously nauseating and appetizing. He stared down at his prey.

  Those distinctive black, white, and pink feathers could shield a person from ler. The flocks of ara forced the ler of earth and winter into quiescence. How had such a thing ever come to be?

  It didn’t matter, he told himself. What mattered was that he had food again. He knelt and began the unpleasant job of butchering his kill, and when that was done he set up camp and built himself a fire. Waiting for the meat to cook, when he could smell its savory odor, was hard, but he was used to hardship.

  When he could wait no more he tried to restrain himself and not eat too much, but as he had expected, the fresh, half-cooked meat was too rich for his shrunken stomach; he spent an unhappy hour curled into a ball in the mud as cramps twisted his guts. When he finally vomited, that helped; he was able to relax, and even eat a little more before settling to sleep for the night.

  In the morning his belly seemed to have made its peace with him; he ate a good breakfast of ara thigh, and it stayed down without discomfort.

  After that, he squatted by the fire and tried to plan.

  He did not want to go too far from the palace; he needed to know when the Wizard Lord came up from Winterhome. On the other hand, he needed to eat, which meant staying near the ara, which did not seem inclined to go too near the cliffs. He also needed to decide whether he was going to try to live on his own, or rejoin the Clan of the Golden Spear, or perhaps find a temporary home with some other clan.

  For now, he decided, he would expect to live on his own—after all, he didn’t know when the Uplanders would return. If he encountered any of the nomads, though, he would try to join them; it would be safer to live in a group. He would stay near the ara, but not too near, and would make trips back to the Summer Palace every so often, to reconnoiter.

  And sooner or later Artil im Salthir would come, and Sword would kill him, and there would be an end to the whole system of Wizard Lords and Chosen—or else Sword would die, and what became of the world would no longer be his concern.

  The possibility of not killing the Wizard Lord occurred to him, but after surviving the winter, he dismissed it. He could not hear the ghosts of Babble and Azir shi Azir calling out for vengeance, not up here on the plateau, but he knew they were there, all the same. Lore and Boss were in the Wizard Lord’s dungeons, and Snatcher, Beauty, and Bow might still be out there somewhere trying to find him. He could not let them all down. He could not leave the Wizard Lord to rule Barokan in peace. He would try to kill Artil im Salthir.

  What would become of him if he succeeded, what he would do after he killed the Wizard Lord, he had no idea. Artil’s guards might kill him in revenge, he supposed.

  Or he might just go home to Mad Oak, raise barley and beans for the rest of his life, and let the rest of Barokan look after itself. That was certainly what he hoped for. Perhaps he might even find a wife—with no Wizard Lord, there would be no need for the Chosen, and he could give up his magic.

  At least, he hoped he could; he wasn’t sure just how that would work. He knew that when any of the Chosen died, the Wizard Lord’s matching talisman stopped working, but the reverse wasn’t true. When he had slain the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills, his own magic hadn’t been interrupted. He might remain the Swordsman even if there was no Wizard Lord.

  And there would be no new Wizard Lord. Artil’s men had slain almost all the remaining wizards, and the handful of survivors surely wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to choose one of their number to take on the role.

  If they did try it, Sword decided, he would finish the job Artil had begun, and kill them all.

  His own thirst for blood startled him; after all, it wasn’t so very long ago that he had told his mother that he never wanted to kill anyone, and more than once during the winter he had wept over what he had become. He had never thought of himself as a killer, yet he had slaughtered a dozen or more of the Wizard Lord’s soldiers, and here he was, calmly considering the murder of every surviving wizard in Barokan.

  He did not weep this time; he had food in his belly and hope for the future. Yes, he was a killer. That was what the Wizard Lords had done to him, he told himself. And that was why there could be no more Wizard Lords.

  He glanced at his supply of meat, and reached for his knife. He had gotten out of the habit of eating whenever he chose, but now, he told himself, he was free to regain it; if he didn’t eat, most of the bird’s flesh would spoil and go to waste.

  Eight days later, when the snow had shrunk to scattered patches, the first Uplanders appeared on the western horizon; a day after that three armed men approached Sword’s camp, bearing a small banner emblazoned with a dragon.

  It seemed very strange to see other human beings again, and Sword met them with his hand on his sword hilt and his spear on his back.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” one of them asked.

  “I am the Chosen Swordsman of Barokan,” Sword replied. “I have taken refuge from the Dark Lord of Winterhome as a guest of the Clan of the Golden Spear.”

  The three men exchanged glances.

  “The vanguard of the Clan of the Golden Spear is five days behind us, and is reported to be heading north of this area,” the spokesman said. “Why are you here, then?”

  “I did not return to Winterhome with them,” Sword explained. “I took shelter where I could, and stayed in the Uplands through the winter, and am now awaiting their return.”

  “You’re waiting in the wrong place,” the dragon-clan spokesman told him. “North, on Blue Toad Creek.” He pointed.

  “This was where I found food,” Sword said, pointing at the remains of the ara carcass.

  “Why would the Golden Spear give shelter to one of the Chosen?” another man asked before the spokesman could say anything more. “While we were in Winterhome we all heard what you did there.”

  “You called the Wizard Lord a Dark Lord?” the third man asked.

  “He killed some of the Chosen,” Sword said. “That’s not permitted.”

  “But he built the roads and canals—the markets in Winterhome are amazing now!”

  “The same man can do both good and evil,” Sword replied.

  “Enough,” the spokesman said, raising a hand to silence his comrade. “You claim to be a guest of the G
olden Spear, and we want no quarrel with them. Go to them, then. If we find you wandering about again, it will not go well with you.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “If you wish it to be.”

  “Your companion said you had heard what I did in Winterhome,” Sword said. “You know I am the Chosen Swordsman, and that I fought a score of the Wizard Lord’s men and defeated them. If you are threatening to kill or enslave me, consider well what you are attempting.” He pulled his sword a few inches out of its scabbard.

  “You are not in Winterhome now, Lowlander,” the spokesman said. “This flock is our clan’s flock for this year, and this is our land.”

  Sword looked at him thoughtfully. “Yet you cannot hear its spirits, can you?”

  “What spirits? This is the Uplands, where we do not truckle to ler. Here we rely on muscle and bone and our wits, not dickering with every little spirit.”

  “Your lands have ler, just like any other,” Sword said.

  “What would you know of it?”

  Sword started to reply, then thought better of it. Really, what did he hope to accomplish by arguing with these people? He had not come here to talk to them, but to kill Artil im Salthir.

  And if they wanted him to rejoin the Clan of the Golden Spear, well, wasn’t that just what he had intended to do in any case?

  “Nothing,” he said. He pointed. “You say the Clan of the Golden Spear is over there?”

  “Roughly. It was agreed in council last month that they would follow Blue Toad Creek.”

  Sword nodded. “Then I will find them there. Thank you.” He started to turn away.

  “Wait,” the spokesman said.

  Sword turned back. “Why?”

  “You said . . . you stayed up here all winter?”

  “Yes.”

  “In that?” He gestured at Sword’s makeshift little tent.

  “Of course not,” Sword replied.

  “But then—”

  “I am the Chosen Swordsman of Barokan,” Sword said. “I have magic.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You told me I wasn’t welcome here,” Sword interrupted. “Let me break camp and begone, then.”