Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 (27 page)

"I suppose."

For a moment the two of them were silent,
contemplating one another; then the Archer said, "So then, we're agreed
that the Wizard Lord must die, and you don't mind if I take care of it?"

Breaker hesitated.
"The Seer says we need to find the others, first." It occurred to
him to wonder just why he was so willing to yield to her in this, when they
were nominally equals, but he knew why—she was his senior in every way, and
knew things he did not. She had decades of experience, while he was not yet
twenty. And she reminded him of the women he had obeyed back in Mad Oak; he
deferred to her without thinking about it.

The Archer frowned.
"Oh, I suppose she's right. How very tedious—but we want to do things
properly." The frown vanished. "And this means we'll meet the
Beauty, doesn't it? That should be pleasant—I've always wondered what she really
looks like."

Breaker started.
"You don'
t know? Haven't you met her?"

"No, I haven't. Have you?"

"No—but I've only been the Swordsman for
a few months."

"And I've only been the Archer for
...
oh, I suppose it's seven years, now.
Not so very long, at any rate, and the Beauty keeps to herself. I've met Lore
and Seer and Babble and Boss, but until today I hadn't met
you,
and I haven't met
the Thief or the Beauty."

"You'd met the Old Swordsman,
though."

"Blade? Oh, once or twice. Not
often."

"But not the Thief or the Beauty?"

"No. They don't
...
well, I don't know what the story is, really. Maybe they're
supposed to remain hidden, so the Wizard Lord won't know who they are and they
can take him by surprise."

"But he can find
all of us, just as the Seer can, I thought. I mean, he's the
Wizard Lord
—he knows where
everybody
is. It goes with the job."

"Probably. I don't know."

"He knows where we are right now.
Everyone knowing who we are—I wonder about that," Breaker said. "I
mean, wouldn't it be better if we could take the Wizard Lord by surprise?"

"Oh, I
..
."

The Archer's reply was interrupted by a man
emerging from the tavern, calling, "Swordsman? Are you .
..
hey! The Archer! You're the Archer,
aren't you?"

The Archer sighed and acknowledged his
identity, and the two men allowed themselves to be herded inside, questioned,
studied, toasted, and admired. Later in the evening the Archer demonstrated his
skill by putting a dozen arrows, one after the other, through an iron ring
swinging on the end of a string; when the performance was over he explained
quietly to Breaker that quite aside from satisfying the locals' demands for a
display of magical skill, this fulfilled the daily ritual the
ler
demanded of him—he didn't need to spend an hour in practice, but was
required to hit twelve difficult targets with
missiles of one sort or another.

"Sometimes I
just toss pebbles, or other things," he said, "but in that case the
targets need to be
very
difficult."

Breaker nodded, and wondered what demands
were made on the other Chosen, but then the townsfolk came roaring up to him
demanding a display of
his
prowess.

Well after midnight the five of them were at
last permitted to retreat to the special compound where the town's visitors
could spend the night without being possessed by the local
ler
as they slept, and wh
ere they could speak more privately.

No ordinary inn or
guesthouse was available in Seven Sides because the town's spirits, rather than
merely sending dreams into sleeping minds, had a habit of animating sleeping
bodies and using them to act out their fav
orite tales of olden times. The presence of
strangers meant the possibility of new and dangerous stories—the
ler
sometimes got carried away, and people often awoke to find they had
sustained bruises and scars reenacting ancient battles. The presence of a
swordsman and an
archer—well, no one wanted the Chosen sleeping in the village itself.

Breaker shuddered as
they made their way across the compound yard to the guesthouses, not at the
habits of the local
ler,
nor at the memory of Stoneslope or the
prospec
t
of confronting the Wizard Lord in a battle to the death, but merely at the feel
of his environment; the air in this place was cool and dead. The village's
ler
not only did not trouble sleeping visitors here, they did not enter at
all, and sealed the area
off from any other spirits that might seep in. As a result the entire
compound was lifeless and inert; the dirt underfoot was bare and packed hard,
unbroken by any trace of green. The air was still; the half-dozen little
cottages were dull and dim, with no bright colors nor the slightest glint of
light. Breaker had never before experienced lifeless surroundings, and he did
not like the sensation—or rather, the eerie
lack
of sensation—at all.

"I wonder whether the Wizard Lord can
hear us
here,"
the Archer
said.

"Probably," Breaker said, trying to
distract himself. "Isn't a wizard's magic independent of place?"

"But still, he works his will by
commanding
ler,
like any priest or wizard, and there
are no
ler
here."

"There are
ler
here," the Scholar corrected.
"There are the
ler
we brought in with us, the
ler
bound to us
by the talismans of the Chosen. And the Wizard Lord can send
his ler
here, as well."

"We might notice them a little more
easily," the Seer said. "There are no others to confuse the
matter." "I see no sign of them," the Archer said. "I hear
almost nothing," the Speaker said, looking about with the calmest
expression that Breaker had ever seen on her face, plainly visible even in the
faint moonlight. "This place is so
quiet.
No plants
speak, the
earth
is silent
..
." "It's a dead
place," the Seer said.

"Yes. I love it," the Speaker said.
"I have a small place at home that is sealed away and lifeless, but it's
smaller, and the voices from outside can still be heard faintly. Here it's so
quiet! I have been here before, but not for some time, and I had forgotten how
pleasant it is."

"Pleasant? It's
.. . it's
dreadful,"
the
Seer said, as she reached the door of the first guesthouse and stopped.

"It's strange, certainly," Breaker
said, stepping up to the second doorway.

"And it's irrelevant, isn't it?"
the Archer asked, as he neared the third. "Can we get down to business
now?"

"Business?" the Scholar asked,
pausing between Breaker and the Archer. "Do we have business to attend
to?"

"Don't we?" the Archer asked.
"I thought you four wanted to discuss whether or not to kill the Wizard
Lord—and how to go about it."

"He has to
die," the Seer said. "He destroyed an entire town. But we can't act
without all eight of us, so there's no need to discuss anything unt
il we find Boss, and
the Thief, and the Beauty."

"Why do we need all eight?" the
Archer asked. "There are five of us here; if we all agree then that's a
majority, and we can get on with it."

"We need the Leader, at the very
least," the Scholar said. "After all, he's meant to
lead
us."

"We must all agree," the Seer said.

"Why?" the Archer insisted.

"The Old Swordsman didn't tell me we
needed to be unanimous," Breaker agreed.

"If there are only five, the Wizard Lord
can kill us all and still have enough magic to rule," the Seer said.

"Can he?" the Archer asked.

"I wouldn't say it's certain," the
Scholar said. "We don't have much precedent, since every previous Dark
Lord who slew any of the Chosen was removed from power soon afterward. If he
killed us, the remaining Chosen and the Council of Immortals would certainly
want to remove him, and powerful as the Wizard Lord is, I don't know that he
could defeat the entire Council with a mere three-eighths of his magic
available."

"Are we all
agreed that he must die, though?" "I take it that young Sword told
you about Stoneslope?" the Seer said.

"He did—not that
it really matters; I've been willing to kill this Wizard Lord for years, just
on general principles. I became the world's greatest archer to slay Dark Lords,
not
just to win wagers."

"We'll see what
Boss says," the Seer replied. "If he thinks six of us are enough then
we'll go without the Thief or the Beauty, but I want the Leader to guide us, to
devise our approach. I don't want to just walk into the Wizard L
ord's stronghold and
say, 'Hello, we've come to kill you.' I want a plan."

"When he sticks his face out of his
tower I could put an arrow through his eye from a nice safe distance,"
the Archer said. "How's that for a plan?"

"A little rudimentary," the Scholar
said. "What constitutes a safe distance with a wizard whose power extends
over all of Barokan?"

"We'll talk to the Leader," the
Seer said.

"You know,
you
aren't Boss," the Archer said. "You're the eldest here, but
all the same, you're not in charge. W
hat if the rest of us don't want to take the
time to find him?"

"He's in the Midlands," the Seer
said. "It's not that far."

"But why should we bother? Why not go
straight to the Wizard Lord
now,
before he has time to prepare?"

"He's had five years to prepare. He must
have known when he destroyed Stoneslope that we would find out and come after
him eventually. We need to prepare as much as
we
can."

"You're scared," the Archer said,
pointing a finger at the Seer.

For a moment no one spoke; then the Seer
said, "Of
course
I'm scared—I felt the terror his
victims felt in Stoneslope, and some of it stayed with me. And even without
that, I'd be scared. If you weren't a fool you would be, too. We're planning to
kill the
Wizard
Lord,
Bow. To kill a man—that's a grave responsibility
to begin with, and
this
particular man is dangerous and
powerful. We saw what he did to Stoneslope, and it was horrific—you have no
idea how bad it was. Yes, if he kills us he'll be terrifically weakened, and
he'll be slain anyway, but
he may not care
—he
may kill us anyway. He's mad, he must be, to do what he did to his own
hometown, and that means he may not have the sense to not kill us. If he has
any
sense he'll abdicate, give up the talismans and tell the Council to
choose a new Wizard
Lord, and retire, and if he did that we would have to let him live— and
I pray to all the
ler
that he does that, and soon, so that we don't have to fight him."

"You're giving him time to realize it's
hopeless," Breaker said.

"Yes, I am—that, and I do want Boss to help
us. He's the Chosen Leader—he has magic, just like the rest of us, but
his
magic is in planning and scheming and improvising, persuading people
to help us and directing our attack. I want that magic on our side, to give us
every advantage we
can get. I don't want to die. I don't want to kill anyone if I don't
need to, either."