Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 (26 page)

"Ah." They reached the bottom of
the stair, and she said, "But you do not truly think of that as your own name
yet— it's a title, more than a name. Your predecessor was known as Blade to his
friends; do you have a nickname like that? Or would you like to be called
Blade?"

Breaker shook his head. "No, he can keep
that name; I don't want it."

"You were known for more than half your
life as .
.. Shatterer? Divider? The
ler
do not speak our
tongue . . ." "Breaker."

"And you still think of yourself as the
Breaker." Breaker glanced back and saw the Scholar listening with obvious
interest.

"I suppose I do," he admitted.
"I will call you Sword."

It was Breaker's turn
to almost stumble; he had assumed she was about to settle on using his old
nickname, and the sudden change of direction startled him—not to mention the
coincidence that she had happened on the same
nickname his neighbors had used, back in Mad
Oak. He opened his mouth to say something, then stopped.

He did not really want his old name back; he
did not want to break anything.

"Sword is good," he said.

The Seer and the Scholar glanced at one
another.

Then the four of them stepped into a small
room of bare stone, and the Speaker closed the door behind them, plunging them
into utter darkness, before Breaker—or Swo
rd— could
take in much of their surroundings.

He could hear
something crunching underfoot, though.

"A
storeroom," the Speaker said. "It held grain for the winter, but
winter is done and the new harvest not yet in. The room is strong, the walls
thick stone without seam, to keep out mice. We won't be heard by human ears,
and the
ler
of the grain are
slumbering. Only the stones speak, and their
words are slow and gentle."

"Good," the Seer said; the other
two made no comment, but Breaker, for one, found the darkness uncomfortable.

"Tell me, then, why you believe Laquar
kellin Hario must be removed."

"Have you ever heard of a town called
Stoneslope?" the Seer asked.

"Not that I
recall, not by that name," the Speaker replied. "The
ler
would have another
name for it, of course."

"Of course. It's the town where the
Wizard Lord was born and raised; he left when he was fifteen."

"Ah! Yes, I know of it. What of
it?"

"It's gone," the Swordsman
said—partly just to hear his own voice and remind everyone that he was there in
the dark.

"The Wizard Lord destroyed it," the
Seer said. "But—a moment, then."

For what seemed several minutes, no one
spoke—though Breaker was unsure exactly what they were waiting for. Then the
Speaker said, "And he slew all who lived there?"

A new note had crept into her voice, the
singsong become a dirge.

"So it appears, and so he
believes," the Seer said. "The air was thick with the souls of the
dead, all full of fear and anger."

"The aunt who took him in when his
father died? His childhood betrothed? The cousin he deflowered instead?"

"If they were there, he killed
them," the Scholar said.

The Speaker made a noise of strangled
disgust. Then silence descended again, broken only by the grinding of spilled
grain beneath Breaker's boots as he shifted nervously-

"We must find Farash inith Kerra das Bik
abba Terrul sinna Oppor, and the others," the Speaker said.

"Farash . . ." Breaker did not
recognize any part of the name.

"The Leader," the Speaker
explained. "Boss."

"Yes," the Seer replied. "We
agree. Boss and the others. The Archer is nearest; could you send him word to
meet us halfway?"

 
The Speaker could speak to anything that lived
or had any spiritual existence, but she could not easily
 
command anything;
the birds and
ler
she asked to convey the message did not
cooperate. She could have forced them by using their true names, but di
d not want to, as it
would bring protests only she could hear.

At last, though, she found a stray dog that
agreed to carry a note tied round its neck, and to find the man with the scent
the Speaker described.

"You can describe a person's scent well
enough to identify him?" Breaker marveled, as the dog ran off.

"Only in the
languages of dogs," the Speaker said. "Half their vocabulary—more
than half—is about smells. They have no words for color or music, but a
thousand shades of acrid, a thousand kinds of so
ur."

"And how do you know the Archer's smell
well enough to describe him that way?"

"It's in his true name," she said.
She hefted her pack. "Shall we go?"

They went.

Two days later the four of them were sitting
in a tavern in a town called Seven Sides, talking to some of the locals. The
townsfolk had recognized Breaker as the Swordsman immediately—not difficult,
given the sword on his belt— and then guessed that the people with him might
also be Chosen. They had quickly identified the Seer, and guessed the Speaker;
now they were trying to determine which of the Chosen the fourth might be. The
travelers had agreed to play along with this guessing game in exchange for
bread, ham, gravy, and beer. They sat, eating silently, and listening while the
natives argued.

"He doesn't have a bow or any
arrows."

"I think the Leader would have to be
taller."

"That leaves the Thief and the
Scholar."

"And the Beauty, but I think we can rule
that
one
out."

That evinced a round of laughter. "How
do we know he even
is
one of the
Chosen?" a boy
asked as the laughter subsided. "Maybe he's just a friend of
theirs."

"The lad has a point."

"But they agreed to our game! They
wouldn't have done that if he wasn't one of them; it wouldn't be honest."

"Are the Chosen necessarily
honest?"

"I certainly
hope
so!"

"Then he's the Thief or the
Scholar."

"Or he left his bow and arrows somewhere
else."

"Look at his arms—he's not one
accustomed to drawing a bow. The Swordsman has the shoulders of a fighting man,
but this other one
..."

"The Scholar or the Thief."

"The Thief, I'd say."

"Uh .
..
isn't the present Thief a woman?" That brought a sudden startled silence,
followed by a burst of argument.

"She is! She is, I tell you!"

"Who knows? Would a thief
admit
to being a
thief?"

"Then who's the woman?"

"She's just trying to get
attention!"

"The real Thief wouldn't
want
attention."

"I don't think she's trying for
attention."

As they argued, Breaker finished the food on
his plate, gulped the remainder of his beer, then wiped his mouth with the back
of his hand and looked around at the crowd.

There were at least a
score playing the game, and a score more watching; the tavern's dining room was
packed full. They seemed friendly enough, and so far the game's arguments had
remained calm and not turned into quarrels. They all wore the town's standard
garb of white blouse and leather vest—apparently the local
ler
demanded this
attire.

All, that is, except the man in the doorway,
who was watching and listening with amused interest; he wore a dusty deerskin
tunic, instead. And he carried a bow on his back.

He was a tall,
broad-shouldered, slim-waisted fellow with a narrow face and pointed jaw; he
wore his light brown hair long and loose, but his beard was trimmed short and
to a point that exaggerated the sharpnes
s of his chin. His clothes were worn and not
particularly clean, from square leather cap to muddy brown boots. He smiled
crookedly at Breaker.

No one else seemed to have noticed him yet.

Breaker cocked his head, and the man with the
bow nodded an acknowledgment.

"Excuse me for a moment," Breaker
said, getting to his feet.

People moved aside to let him rise from his
chair and slip out of the crowd; oddly, none of them looked where he was
looking, and no one else seemed to notice the man at the door.

The man stepped to one side as Breaker
approached, as well, but then turned his back to the tavern wall and said,
"So you're the new Swordsman?"

Breaker looked him in the eye—the two men
were very close in height. "And you're the Archer."

"I got Babble's note—the Speaker's, I
mean. So we're finally going to do what we swore we would when we accepted
these roles, then? We're going to kill him?"

Breaker hesitated. "So it would
seem," he admitted.

"Do you want to do it, or should
I?"

"I
...
I don't know," Breaker replied. "I assumed that whichever of us had
the better opportunity would do it. I mean, if it needs to be done."

'That's fine, then. You don't mind if I do
it? You won't feel I've cheated you out of the glory?"

Breaker blinked. This was not at all the
conversation he had expected. "No, I don't mind," he said. "If
you have the chance, go ahead."

"That's fine,
then!" The Archer reached out and clapped Breaker on the shoulder. "I
think we'll get along just fine, lad—you've got more sense than your
predecessor,
that's plain!"

"I don't
...
I wouldn't say that."

"Oh, no question about it. He kept
insisting he didn't want to kill anyone, which is all very well, but then he
said / shouldn't, either, and really, what's the point of being one of the
Chosen, then? Our whole
purpose
is to kill the
Wizard Lord!"

"Well, if he deserves it," Breaker
said. "If he's turned wicked." He hesitated, unsure what to say next,
because after all, as he well knew, the Wizard Lord
had
turned wicked and needed to be removed. The
ler
of a hundred dead innocents had said so, and the Wizard Lord himself
had admitted murdering them.

"And if he
hasn't, we don't do anything at all? That's just so pointless. I knew when I
agreed to become the Archer that we'd have a Dark Lord soon—I could just
feel
it, as if
ler
were whispering to me. And sure enough, we do—though old Blade never
wanted to admit it, and I don't think the others even realized it." He
smiled, and leaned against the wall. "So how did you convince them?"

"I didn't," Breaker said.
"They
convinced
me.
Something the Scholar said made the Seer suspicious, and they dragged me
along, and we all went to the Wizard Lord's home village, a place called
Stoneslope, and we saw what he'd done to it. And that's when the three of us
knew."

"Something
Lore
said? The Seer
always did take his stories seriously, but they all just sounded like a lot of
dusty, useless nonsense to me."

"It's complicated," Breaker said—he
did not feel like trying to explain anything to this strange man, who seemed
downright
enthusiastic
about killing the Wizard Lord.

"So the Wizard Lord did something bad to
his old neighbors?"

"He killed them," Breaker said.

The Archer seemed suddenly wary. "Were
they wizards? We aren't supposed to interfere if he kills wizards—we're to assume
they'd gone rogue and started raping girls and eating babies."

"They weren't wizards. Not all of them,
anyway—there might have been a wizard in there somewhere."

"Not all
...
? And somewhere .
..
?" For the first time the

Archer's confidence looked slightly shaken.
"Ah, how many people did he kill?" "All of them."

For a moment the Archer stared at him,
confused. "What do you mean?"

"I mean he killed them all. The entire
town. He sent a plague, and then killed the survivors and burned the
town."

The Archer stared for a moment, then shook
his head. "No, he didn't."

"Yes, he did. Five years ago. We only
just found out."

"No, that's insane. Why would he
slaughter a whole
town?
What about his friends and family there?"

"He claims he had no friends—and yes, it's
insane. That's why we need to kill him."

"By the ghosts
of my ancestors," the Archer said quietly. "He's gone completely
mad?"

"Yes, of course—why else would we be
planning to kill him?"

"Well, I
...
well, yes, I see. You're right, of course." He stared
thoughtfully at Breaker.

Breaker stared back, then glanced at the open
tavern door.

"The Scholar!" someone was
shouting. "He's the Scholar! Must be!"

"Why didn't they notice you?"
Breaker asked. "Because I didn't want them to," the Archer said.
"That's part of my magic—not being noticed." "They can't see
you?"

"They
don't
see me. It's not the same thing. If they were actually
looking
for me, or if they happened to glance right at me without any
distractions, then they
would
see me, but I can just.. . fail
to attract
attention. Not stand out. It's all part of the magic."

"I thought your magic was just
archery—hitting what you aim at."

"Oh, that's the other half—but the
ability to wait, to lurk, to go unnoticed until I can make my shot, that's all
part of it, too. After all, don't you have superhuman speed and agility even
when you don't have a sword in your hand? Aren't there things you can do
without a blade?"

"I
suppose," Breaker agreed, remembering the women he had bedded over the
past few months, and how they had reacted. How did
that
fit in with the
skills needed to slay a Dark Lord?

"And Lore doesn't just remember stories
about the Wizard Lords, and Seer can do more than tell us where the Wizard Lord
is, and Babble can understand every language there is as well as speak it, and
knows all the true names—we all have more than one skill, more than one
ler
bound to us."