Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 (28 page)

"The third,
fourth, and seventh Dark Lords all retired peacefully when confronted with
their sins and failures," the Scholar said. "Our current lord hasn't
chosen that
path yet, but it really would be better for all concerned if he
did."

"It would be
even better if you people just went home and dropped this whole mission,"
a high-pitched, inhuman voice said; Breaker started, and looked down to see an
immense rat sitting
up on its haunches by the corner of the nearest guesthouse. "I'm
not going to hurt anyone else who doesn't deserve it; all my old enemies are
already dead."

"So you say
now," the Seer said. "Get away, and let us talk!" She swung her
walking stick at the ra
t, which dodged and vanished into the shadows between houses.

"How much did he
hear?" Breaker asked, worried. "Not much," the Seer said.
"He manifested in that rat just as you said I was giving him time to see
it's hopeless." "Is he gone now?" "Yes. For th
e moment."

"He's not going to surrender
peacefully," the Archer said. "I vote we go kill him as quickly as we
can, and get it over with."

"And I say we need the Leader's
magic," the Seer replied. "I vote we go to the Midlands and find
Boss."

"Lore?" the Archer said, turning to
the Scholar.

"I think he may yet see reason,"
the Scholar said. "I vote with the Seer."

"There is no reason to see," the
Speaker said, startling Breaker. "Kill him now."

"The deciding vote is yours,
Sword," the Seer said, turning to Breaker.

"I..."
Breaker hesitated, looking at the Archer and the Speaker. This was his chance
to get on with it, to get it over with sooner—but it didn't
feel
right. Perhaps the Leader's presence would remedy that. He turned back
to the Seer. "I think we s
hould find the Leader. What you say about his
magic—that's true and important. We should talk to him before we rush
in."

"Three to two," the Scholar said.

"I hope you won't do anything foolish,
like going in alone," the Seer said to the Archer.

The Archer sighed. "No," he said.
"I'll behave. But no dawdling—tomorrow we head for the Midlands by the
fastest route, agreed?"

"Agreed."

"And so to bed," the Scholar said.
"Let us get as much sleep as we can before we go!"

"I'll miss this place," the Speaker
said. Then she stepped back and vanished into one of the guesthouses.

A moment later all five had gone to their
separate beds, and the only sign of life in the lerless compound was a lone
rat, sniffing at the foundations of the Seer's chosen shelter.

Breaker's dreams that night were vague and
jumbled, unguided by
ler,
but he awoke
with a fading memory of the bone-strewn hillside in Stoneslope and was
unusually quiet for much of the morning.

 
They made good
time on their northward journey,
I
but to l
ittle initial avail; to their extreme annoyance
the
Seer reported one morning, as they marched across a broad and
peaceful meadow behind a taciturn guide, that the Leader had packed up and
headed east, moving farther away.

"What does that idiot think he's
doing?" the Archer complained.

"He probably has no idea we're looking
for him," the Seer said. "After all, how could he know? And better to
the east than into the western marshes, or out to the islands."

"He can't go
too
far," Breaker said. "Not to the east— he'll reach the
cliffs."

"Is there any
way we can
tell
him
we need to talk to him?" the Archer asked. "The way the Speaker sent
me that message, perhaps?"

"I don't know of anything I can—no, be
still—I don't know of any spirit I might convince to go so far," the
Speaker said. "Even if I spoke a bird's true name, the compulsion would
not last long enough to cover such a distance." She was walking ahead of
the other four Chosen, close behind their hired guide, with her head down;
every so often she started as some part of the surrounding landscape spoke to
her, unheard by the others.

"Perhaps we could find a wizard who
could fly a message to him?" the Scholar suggested.

"There are no wizards any closer to us
than Boss is," the Seer reported.

"But isn't there some way we can contact
them magically?" Breaker asked.

"I tried, days ago," the Seer said.
"I had a talisman that was supposed to summon a wizard I know. No
response."

"We have to go as far as Winterhome to
find the Beauty anyway, don't we?" Breaker asked. "He won't go any
farther than that, will he?"

"You mean up on the plateau, above the
cliffs?" The Seer shrugged. "I can't imagine why he would. If he
does, though, we can't follow him—our magic won't work outside Varagan."

"We
could
follow him,"
the Scholar said. "We'd just need to use
more mundane methods."

"/ don't know anything about
tracking," the Seer said. "Do you?"

"Well, a little," the Scholar said.
"It does come up in certain stories, of course."

"Why would he go somewhere
his
magic does
n't work?" the Archer asked. "He won't go up the cliffs."

"We'll probably catch up with him in
Winterhome," Breaker said. "And the Beauty, too."

"You're really looking forward to
getting a look at her, aren't you?" the Archer asked, grinning. He jabbed
Breaker with an elbow as the two of them drew slightly ahead of the Scholar and
the Seer. "Well, maybe we will, and maybe it'll be worth it. We'll
see."

"I'd like to see
what she looks like, of course," Breaker agreed, as he trudged onward,
"but mostly I want to get on with business. We need to remove the Wizard
Lord, and the Seer says we can't do that without the Leader."

The Archer glanced
back over his shoulder, then leaned closer and said quietly, "You know, we
don't need to do what the Seer says. We could turn around right now, just the
two of us, and go kill the bastard. We don't need to go all the way to
Winterhome just so Boss can tell us what we already know."

Breaker glanced at
their guide, wondering if the bent little man had heard the Archer's words
. "He'd see us
coming, and probably kill us both," the Swordsman said. "The Seer is
right about mat."

"We aren't that easy to kill."

"We aren't wizards, either. I agree he
needs to be removed, but I'd like to survive the process."

"But we're the Chosen! He won't kill
us—it would destroy his magic."

Breaker sighed, and
picked up his pace—he thought he would prefer the guide's company to the
Archer's, and in any case the group was becoming uncomfortably spread out.
"He's a human being—or at least he used to
be, I suppose it's not quite so certain
anymore, but he still acts like one. If he's got a choice between being killed
right now,
or giving up his magic and living a while longer and maybe talking his
way out of it altogether—well, I don't expect him to s
tand there playing
target."

"But you think it'll work any better
with eight of us, instead of two or three?" the Archer demanded, hurrying
after him.

"I don't know," Breaker admitted.
"I'm beginning to wonder how our predecessors killed those five Dark
Lords—how did it ever get that far? Why didn't they all resign, rather than
fight to the death?"

"Three
did
resign," the Scholar reminded him, from behind the two. "I
think it's safe to conclude that the five who died were either completely
irrational in t
heir madness, or convinced they could win the battle somehow."

"Or they were caught by surprise, and
dead before they could react," the Archer suggested.

"That might be," the Scholar
conceded. "Certainly, the Dark Lord of Kamith t'Daru was caught
off-guard."

"That's the approach I'd prefer,"
the Archer said. "An arrow through the eye before he even knows we're
near!"

"We noticed," Breaker said dryly,
as he approached the guide. "But the way it's supposed to operate is that
the eight of us work as a team—a band of heroes, not a handful of assassins."
As he spoke, Breaker wished that the five of them felt more like a team; he
hoped that the Leader's presence would bring them together. That was perhaps
his strongest reason for voting to find Boss before turning back toward the
Galbek Hills.

"I don't see
much of a difference," the Archer said. "In many languages there
is
no difference,"
the Speaker murmured.

Breaker glanced at her, startled. He found
that very strange—how could a language not distinguish between defenders and
predators?

"Really," the Archer said, "if
the idea is simply to remove a wizard who threatens all of Barokan, does it
matter how it's done? Do we really need all this rigmarole gathering the
Chosen?"

"That's how it works," Breaker
said. "That's the system that protects us all. The
ler
guard the world. The priests and wizards control the
ler
and guard us from any that turn hostile, the priests in our homelands,
the wizards in the wider world. The Wizard Lord protects us against bad weather
and bad men and any wizards who go bad, and the Chosen protect us when a
Wizard Lord goes bad. That's how the Council of Immortals set it up, and it's
why we're all here instead of safe at home with our families."

The guide, who had
apparently been liste
ning to at least this speech, asked quietly, "And what happens if
the Chosen go bad?"

"That's why there are eight of us,"
the Scholar said. "If there's just one of us who goes mad, then the Wizard
Lord or the other Chosen can deal with him."

"And what if all eight of you go
mad?"

"How likely is
it that
eight
of
us would go mad?" the Seer responded, catching up.

"If you travel together often, and go
astray on certain routes, it's not that unlikely," the guide said.

"We
don
7 usually travel together," Breaker
said—but he glanced around uneasily at the
surrounding forest, aware that the spirits of the trees were watching him, and
that some of them might well be just as mad and just as predatory as the Mad
Oak back home.

"The five of you
are here," the guide sai
d.

"And this is the first time in the
twenty years I've been the Scholar that we've had so many together," the
Scholar said.

The guide glanced at him, startled.

"Then—you really
are
going to kill the Wizard Lord? This isn't just... But why? What did he
do?
"

"He wiped out an entire town,"
Breaker said. "He killed every man, woman, and child in it,
deliberately."

The guide looked from face to face; the
Speaker was listening to something off to the side that the others couldn't
hear and didn't meet his eyes, but the Scholar and the Archer nodded.

"I didn't see it myself," the
Archer admitted, "but they swear to it."

"I did see it," the Scholar said.
"So did Seer and Sword. We saw the bones and the burnt-out ruins, and felt
the lingering spirits of the dead crying out for justice."

"Why did he do
it?" the guide asked, obviously frightened. His voice dropped to a
whisper. "Is he
mad?"

"Revenge," Breaker said. "He
wanted revenge."

"What?" The guide's expression was
so astonished Breaker almost laughed. "Who could have harmed the
Wizard Lord
so badly that he
needed vengeance?"

"He killed the people who had teased him
as a child," the Scholar said.

"And everyone else in town, while he was
at it," Breaker said.

"That's insane!"

"That's why we're going to kill
him," the Archer agreed. "And
..."
The guide paused and looked around, then leaned forward and whispered,
"Does he know you know?" "He knows," the Seer said.

"Then—then isn't it dangerous? Isn't he
likely to try to kill
you
before you
kill
him?"

"Quite possibly,
" the Scholar
said. "Though so far he hasn't tried."

"Am / in danger, for guiding you?"

The Chosen glanced at one another. None of
them had considered that possibility.

"I don't know," Breaker said.
"I hope not."

"But I could be?"

"He knows that if he harms any more
innocents he'll only make it worse," the Archer said.

"But you're already planning to kill
him! How could it be worse?"

"Oh, so far we'd settle for his
resignation," the Scholar said. "If he kills any more people, we may
not give him that option."

"And .. . why
are you going north? Isn't his tower to the south, in the Galbek Hills? You
just
came
from
there!" "We need to find the other three Chosen," the Seer said.
"Or at least the Leader," Breaker said. "You know where he
is?"

"I do, yes," said the Seer. "And
right now he's moving east, while we're just standing here talking. Can we move
on?"

"Oh!" The
guide started. "Oh, of course." He looked around. "We need to
bear to the right up ahead to avoid the
ler
of the
ancient ants . .." He started walk
ing.