Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 (103 page)

hair
and a long, half-healed slash across his forehead that seemed to indicate that
at least one
ler
had put up resistance. "We're cutting a road
through from Willowbank to Mad Oak."

Sword blinked and lowered his blade further.
"Cutting a road?"

"That's
right. You don't have a guide for this route anymore, so we're cutting a road,
and if it's properly maintained you won't
need
a
guide, ever again."

Sword struggled for a moment with this
concept.

He
knew that in the Midlands the towns were often so close together that they were
connected by broad roads, wide enough for two carts to pass, where no guide was
needed to protect travelers from the untamed
ler
of
the wilderness; he had been there, and seen it for himself. But that was in the
Midlands,
where one town was only rarely separated from the
next by more than a mile, and where the land between was as likely to be open
grassland as forest. There were no open roads in Longvale, where a good ten
miles of thick woods and marshland divided Mad Oak from Willowbank; there were
only narrow, winding paths that required a skilled guide to navigate safely.

Or
rather, there
had been
only narrow, dangerous paths until now. Looking
past the self-proclaimed "road crew," Sword could see that they had
indeed cut a broad, straight path through the forest—a strip of bare,
sun-dappled brown earth stretching away as far as he could see, with mounds of
chopped greenery lining either side. He could smell the rich scent of fresh
soil, an odor he associated with fields, rather than forests.

Bits
of leaf fluttered about those side-mounds in ways that had nothing to do with
the faint breeze that found its way through the birches, and little glimmers of
light and color moved through them where no sunlight could reach; the
ler
of
the plants and other things that had been cleared away were obviously still
active, and struggling to respond to the disruption of their home.

The
road itself, though, seemed clear and untroubled. Sword pointed at it.
"That goes all the way to Willowbank?"

"Indeed it does," said the man who had
first told him he faced a road crew, glancing proudly back over his shoulder.
"Oh, it's not all as straight as that, as we had to route it around the
bogs, but it's a good road. And before that we cut a road from Rock Bridge to
Willowbank, and from Broad-pool to Rock Bridge."

"You did?"

"We
did. And if the other crews have done their jobs, you can now walk from here
all the way to Winterhome without a guide, so long as you stay on the road and
wear a few feathers."

That
was more than Sword could comprehend all at once. "Winterhome?"

"Winterhome.
That's where the Wizard Lord lives, after all."

Sword nodded. "Of course," he
agreed.

He
had heard that the current Wizard Lord had chosen Winterhome as his home. He
had vaguely wondered why, since he knew the Wizard Lord was not a native of
Winter-home, but he had not pursued the matter. After all, a Wizard Lord could
live anywhere in Barokan that he chose; if the current one wanted to live at
the foot of the Eastern Cliffs, in the town where the Uplanders wintered, that
was his business, and none of Sword's concern.

But
Winterhome had to be a hundred miles away. Could there really be a highway all
the way there, through all that wilderness? He stared at the road.

After
a moment's awkward silence, the apparent crew chief turned and called,
"All right, now, we have work to do! We want this cut through to Mad Oak
while it's still light— with luck we'll dance with the girls in the town's
pavilion tonight!"

A
murmur of agreement sounded. The men lifted their tools and resumed hacking at
the underbrush, extending their road through the birch grove.

Sword shifted his gaze from the road vanishing into
the forest to the hands swinging machetes and hoes. He stared for a moment,
then turned without another word and headed back to town.

This was all strange and new, and he had no idea
how to react to it, but it did not seem to call for hostility. The road crew
was not breaking any laws, so far as he knew. It was not
customary
to
disturb all those wild
ler,
but there was no formal stricture forbidding
it. As long as the men stopped at the boundary shrine, and did nothing to upset
the town's own
ler,
there was no obvious reason to interfere.

Besides,
Sword had no real authority in Mad Oak; he wasn't a priest. He would go back
and let the rest of the town decide what to do.

As
he neared the boundary he could see a score of his townsfolk waiting for him
just beyond the shrine—not just those who had been there before, but more.
Elder and Younger Priestess had joined the party, and looked unhappy; the
sigils
of
office
on their foreheads seemed to be pulsing and glowing
red,
rather than their usual pale and steady gold. Sword
waved to them to indicate that all was well, but he was not actually sure that
was true.

"What's
happening?" Younger Priestess called. "The
ler
are
upset!"

"They're
building a road," Sword called back. "All the way to
...
to Willowbank."

The
priestesses exchanged glances; then Elder called, "They're doing
what?"

"Building
a road," Sword repeated, though he was close enough to the border now that
he no longer needed to shout. "They're clearing a path through the
wilderness, so we won't need guides anymore."

"Can
they
do
that? What about all the
ler?"
Younger
Priestess asked. Her hand reached up to rub at her forehead.

Sword
shrugged. "The men don't appear to be having any real problems. A few cuts
and scratches. They're wearing protective clothing and carrying
ara
feathers."

"They
are
disturbing
the
ler,
though," Elder said. "Many, many
ler.
We
can hear them."

"And feel them," Younger added.

Sword
glanced over his shoulder at the flashing machetes and thumping shovels.
"They don't seem to care."

"Well,
they don't need to live here!" Younger exclaimed. "Those are
our ler..."

"No," Elder said thoughtfully. "They
aren't." She looked at Sword. "They'll stop at the border?"

"I
assume so. One of them said something about dancing in our pavilion tonight. I
don't think they mean
us
any harm, nor anything in Mad Oak."

"They're
disrupting many spirits, though—earth and leaf and tree. And those won't just
quietly vanish."

The
light and movement in those mounds alongside the road had told Sword as much.
"What
will
they do?" he asked, genuinely curious.
"I've never heard of anything like this."

The
priestess frowned. "Well, they'll dissipate
eventually—
a
ler
like
that without a home, without a solid object to bind it to our world, fades away
in time."

"Not
all
ler
are tied to objects, though," Sword protested,
looking down at the sword in his hand.

"The
ler
of
the land are," Elder said. "Any
ler
a
priest can deal with is. The so-called higher
ler,
the
abstract
ler,
they're the domain of wizards, not priests, and I
doubt they're being disturbed by this. These men aren't defying wind or fire or
strength or warmth or any of those, they're uprooting branch and stalk, and
turning earth."

"So the disturbed
ler
will
dissipate
..."

"Eventually.
But until then they'll strike out in any way they can. They'll form into
misshapen ghosts to strike at their attackers, they'll look for things they can
possess, new homes they can claim."

"But
the men are protected," Sword said. "They're wearing
ara
feathers,
and good sturdy clothes."

"Then
they may be safe enough, but I won't walk that road they're building any time
soon. And I think we may want to keep a close watch on the livestock and the
children for the next few days, and be wary of bad dreams." She looked
Sword in the eye. "Did they say who began this? Whose idea it was, to
battle the natural order in this way?"

"The
Wizard Lord," Sword said. "The Lord of Winter-home."

"Ah,"
Elder said. For a moment no one spoke, then she added, "Do you think you
may need to kill him?"

The question was not as bizarre as it might seem,
and Sword took it very seriously. The Wizard Lord was selected by the other
wizards of Barokan, the so-called Council of Immortals, to rule over all the
land from the Eastern Cliffs to the Western Isles, and was given great magical
power to do so. The Wizard Lord controlled the weather, and had power over wind
and fire, over disease, and over many of the beasts of the wilderness. He was
empowered to serve as judge and executioner of any wizard who misbehaved, and
any criminal who fled from the towns into the wild.

And
as a check on the dangers of such great power, eight ordinary people were
chosen to take up special roles and receive limited magical powers of their
own, and it was the duty of these eight to remove any Wizard Lord who proved
himself unfit for his high office.

Sword,
the Swordsman, was one of the Chosen. The silver talisman he always carried in
his pocket bound him to the
ler
of muscle and steel and ensured that he was the
world's greatest swordsman, unbeatable in single combat. In the past, when
Wizard Lords had gone bad, it was usually the Swordsmen of the time who
eventually slew them.

This
particular Swordsman had thought the job was ceremonial when he first accepted
it, as more than a century had passed without any known misbehavior by a Wizard
Lord, but that long streak of good fortune had already been broken once.
Several years ago Sword had struck down the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills with
a single blow to the heart.

But
that Wizard Lord had slaughtered a village; this one was merely building roads.
How could building roads be a crime punishable by death? Yes, it disturbed the
natural order, but who did it really harm?

And
if the Wizard Lord had not gone mad, and was not harming anyone, nor trying to
exceed the powers allotted him, then he was not a Dark Lord and did not need to
be removed. The Chosen were not responsible for maintaining order, but only
for ridding Barokan of Dark Lords.

Elder was waiting for a reply.

"I hope not," Sword said. "I
very much hope not."