Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 (29 page)

The five Chosen followed.

Six days later they were in a town called
Dust Market, going through the cleansing ritual that the local
ler
required before permitting them to stay the night, when the Seer said,
"He's gone past her—Stealth is now closer t
han Boss."

"Stealth?" Breaker asked, as one of
the naked priestesses poured a pitcher of scented water over his head.

"The Thief," the Scholar explained.
"Seer calls her Stealth."

"Ah." Breaker would have nodded,
but he was afraid he would get water in his eyes. "Lore, Boss, Blade,
Babble, Bow, Stealth—but she's just Seer."

The Scholar shrugged. "Why not? And
Blade is gone— you're Sword now."

"What do you call the Beauty?"

"I've never met her," the Seer
said. "I call her the Beauty."

That startled Breaker. "You've never met
her?"

"Not the present one. I knew the last
one; we called her .
..
well, we had
a name for her. It wasn't a nice one, and I regret it now."

"How long has this one been
Chosen?"

The Seer glanced at the Scholar, but had to
wait until most of the just-poured water had run off before he could reply.

"Twenty-three years," Lore said.

"That long? And you've never met
her?"

"I've
met
her," the Scholar said. "She's been Chosen a little longer than I
have. Not long after I became the Scholar she fo
und me to ask a few questions about Barokan's
history, and about the Uplanders. But I haven't seen her since."

"I haven't met her," the Seer said.

"I have spoken with her memories, but
never seen her face," the Speaker said.

Breaker wasn't sure how literally to take
that; he glanced at the Archer, but then remembered that he had already admitted
never meeting the Beauty.

"I'm surprised you haven't," he
said.

"Don't be," the Seer said.
"It's deliberate. I don't
want
to meet
her—but we'll probably have to, n
ow."

"I don't understand."

"You don't need to. But you do need to
help us decide— now that the Thief is closer than the Leader, do we go on
chasing him, or do we talk to her first?"

"You said you just wanted to get Boss
and his magic," the Archer said, as the priestesses began distributing
towels.

"Historically,
the Thief has sometimes been essential," the Scholar pointed out.
"The Thief's magical talents with locks and stealth have been very useful
in two of the five killings our predecessors carried out, and in the case of
the Dark Lord of Goln Vleys, it's possible that the Swordsman might not have
ever managed to gut him at all had the Thief not safely opened the seals on the
fortress gate."

Breaker swallowed.
Although he had become accustomed to talking about killing the Wizard Lord,
every so often a particular turn of phrase would bring it home to him once
again that in a few months at most he was almost certainly going to be trying
to kill a
person,
that he was planning to stick his sword right
through
someone.
Yes, the Wizard Lord was a special case, being a wizard and a mass murderer,
but he was still a human being.

"I have never heard the Thief's
voice," the Speaker said. "I cannot judge her worth."

"I haven't talked to Stealth in, oh,
fourteen or fifteen years," the Seer said. "That would have been just
before you were Chosen, Babble. She doesn't travel much."

"Is she along our route?" Breaker
asked.

"We don't know where Boss is
going," the Seer said. "How can we tell?"

"Well, if we head directly for Winterhome,
how far out of our way would the Thief's home be?"

"Not far," the Seer said. "Not
far at all."

"Then why not? We'll probably want her
to join us eventually."

"Sword has a point," the Archer
said. "Then we'll go there next," the Seer agreed. She accepted a
towel and began drying her hair as she got to her feet. "Agreed."

The farmhouse stood
well off the road, surrounded
I
by bright yellow flowers of a variety Breaker did not recognize; the
five Chosen approached cautiously. "I would have thought a thief would
live in town," Breaker said, as the others slipped through the gate he
held open. "In the largest town she could find, in fact."

"She's
here," the Seer said, as she stepped through. Her tone did not allow
further argument, and Breaker shrugged as he latched the gate behind her. He
turned to see the Archer trotting unhesitatingly up to the door, and hurried to
follow.

The others were still
hastening along the graveled walk when the Archer rapped loudly on the
blue-painted door. No one answered at first, and the five of them had time to
cluster around the threshold before the Archer grew impatient and knocked
again.

This time Breaker
heard a faint voice from within, and the Speaker announced, "She's coming.
Her feet are heavy on the
floorboards, and the spirits of home and
hearth
..."

She was interrupted by the rattle of the
latch, and the door swung open to reveal a rather tired-looking woman in apron
and cap. She was of moderate height, taller than the Speaker or the Seer, and
thin; the thick curls that escaped her white cap were straw-colored, her skin
pale. Her ears appeared oversized to Breaker, but he knew that was exaggerated
by the way her tucked-back hair pushed them forward, and by the narrowness of
her face. Her dress was a faded blue that did not quite match her eyes, the
apron stained a dozen shades of off-white and gray.

She blinked at the five visitors—or perhaps
at the bright sunlight—and said, "Yes?"

The Archer started to speak, but Breaker cut
him off. "Please pardon us for disturbing you, ma'am, but we're looking
for someone
..."

"It's her," the Seer interrupted.
"She's the Thief."

The woman blinked again. "The
what?"

"You're the Thief," the Seer said.

The woman stared at her five visitors—the two
strong young men and the ordinary older man, the sturdy white-haired woman, and
the tiny dark-haired woman who seemed to be whispering silently to herself.
"I haven't stolen anything!" she protested. "If you've been
listening to that silly redheaded boy and his gossip, I'll have you know that
he tells so many lies the
ler
themselves despair of him! Ask his mother,
she'll tell you!"

"We haven't spoken to any redheaded
boy," the Seer said, "and we didn't say you'd stolen anything. I said
you're the Thief—the world's greatest thief, one of the eight Chosen, one of
the heroes who are charged with protecting Varagan from the Wizard Lords."

"I am no such thing," she said.
"Now, go away." She tried to close the door.

The Archer thrust his foot in the way.
"If the Seer says you are the Thief, then I believe you- are the
Thief," he said. "How you might not
know
that baffles me,
though."

She glared at him, then turned that withering
stare on the rest of them. "I am not a thief," she said. "I may
have made certain foolish decisions when I was young, and agreed to things I
shouldn't have, but that was a long time ago and I know better now, and I am
not
a thief. I have not
kept anything that belongs to another, and I have nothing here that isn't mine
by right."

"No one said you had," Breaker said
mildly. "If you'd prefer a more diplomatic phrasing, we believe you are
the one chosen to be the best in the world at those skills associated with
housebreaking and thievery, just as I am the one chosen to be the best in the
world at wielding a sword. That does not mean that you have stolen anything,
any more than my own title means I have killed anyone."

"You know who you are," the Seer
said wearily. "Arguing semantics won't change that."

"I am Merrilin tarak Dolin, wife of
Sezen piri Oldrav, mother of Kilila tesh Barag and Garant asa Dorhals,"
she said defiantly. "I have a name and a place here, and they have nothing
to do with any legends about Chosen Heroes."

"But you are
also
the bearer of the
talisman of thievery," the Seer said.

The Thief snorted. "'Bearer'? I have it
somewhere, put away in a drawer—I don't carry it around the house with
me."

"But you
have
it," the Archer
said. "That makes you one of the Chosen."

"It makes me someone who did something
foolish when I was seventeen, and was too embarrassed to admit it and pass the
silly thing on," Merrilin retorted. "I should have gotten rid of it
years ago."

Breaker remembered
his own unpleasant experience back in Mad Oak when he had left his talisman
behind, and wondered whether the Thief
could
get rid of it—had she ever tried? Was the
illness he had felt something shared by all the Chosen, or unique to the
Swordsman?

"Your pardon, ma'am," the Scholar
said, "but might we take a moment of your time to discuss this, please?
It's a matter of some concern to us all. Might we come in?"

"No. Garant's taking his nap."

"Then I'm afraid we'll have to wait out
here until you speak with us."

She glared at him, then looked down at the
Archer's foot. "When my husband gets home
..."
she began.

"Your husband is not going to
interfere," the Seer said. "Not only are there five of us to the two
of you, but we include the world's greatest swordsman, and the world's greatest
archer! We are equipped to slay the Wizard Lord himself; do you really think
your husband frightens us?"

She stared at the Seer for a moment, then
glanced back over her shoulder, then looked out at her unwelcome visitors
again. "Why can't you just leave me alone?" she asked.

"If you speak with us, that may well be
explained," the Scholar said.

"Your children will be safe," the
Speaker said, startling everyone with her high-pitched singsong.
"Ler
will watch over them. Garant will sleep an hour and a moment more, and
Kilila's game with her dolls will occupy her even longer. The
ler
will see to
it."

The aproned woman stared at her. "Who
are
you?
"
she demanded.

"I am Gliris Tala Danria shul Keredi bav
Sedenir, who hears all tongues and answers when I must." The Speaker
jerked her head suddenly in the middle of this reply, but completed the
sentence without interruption.

"The Speaker," the Seer said.
"Arid I am the Seer, and he is the Scholar, and he is the Archer, and he
is the Swordsman."

"You're
all
Chosen?"

"Yes."

She frowned, glanced back into the house
again, then at the Speaker. Then she reached a decision and stepped out onto
the path, pushing Breaker and the Archer aside and closing the door behind her.

"We can speak here," she said.

"Good. We've come because we have
learned something terrible
..."

Merrilin ignored her and asked the Speaker,
"How do you know that, about my children and the
ler?
Are you a priestess?"

"I am the Chosen Speaker of All
Tongues," the Speaker replied. "I can hear the
ler,
and speak to them—but I have no power over them save the power words
give us all over each other. In this case the spirits of your home and hearth
were troubled by our presence, and wish our business here resolved quickly,
one way or another, and agreed to soothe and guard your children so that we
might accomplish that."

"So you can't
make the
ler
wat
ch over them indefinitely?"

"No."

"Then how can you expect me to leave?
Who would care for my children?"

"I am
...
no, no, no. Let me
...
no. I am not
the one, Merrilin tarak Dolin kal Toria bal Siris, who expects you to
leave."

The Seer and Archer snapped their heads
around to stare at the Speaker, but neither Breaker nor the Scholar was surprised
to hear this.

"Good," Merrilin said. Then she
turned to the Seer. "So why have you come?"

The Seer quickly regained her composure, and
said, "The Wizard Lord has done something terrible—the Scholar and I
realized this a few weeks ago, and we and the Swordsman investigated and saw
the proof. While we were there we heard the Wizard Lord confess his guilt
through the voice of a crow, so there is no possible doubt. We're gathering all
the Chosen, so that we can confront the Wizard Lord and demand his
abdication—and if he refuses, we will slay him, as we are bound to do by our
oaths."

"I am bound by
oath to stay by my husband and raise our children," Merrilin said. "I
think
that takes precedence over any oath I swore when I was just a silly girl."

"But you did swear!"

"Because I didn't think it meant
anything. I thought it would be
...
I
don't know, exciting, I suppose, to be one of the Chosen. One of eight in all
the world, out of all the
millions of people in
Barokan—I thought I would be
special!"

"You
are
special," the
Seer insisted.

"Oh, indeed I am," Merrilin agreed.
"If I do not take something that does not belong to me undetected, or open
a lock without a key, or enter someone else's home uninvited and unseen, or
perform any of a dozen other sordid acts three times each and every day, then I
am struck down by headaches and chills and cramps. How
very
special! Thank all the
ler
that slipping
my children's toys from
their places is sufficient thievery, and nothing prevents me from then
returning those toys to their rightful owners!"

"You must
practice your skills," the Archer said. "So do we all. I must shoot
at a dozen targets a day without a miss, Sword here must
put in an hour of
practice—your burden is not so great as all that!"

"And what do I
get for my practice? Skills I cannot use! I am no thief; why should I take what
isn't mine? You, Archer, you can boast of your skill, and show everyone what
you can do—but
what can I do? If I admit to being the Chosen Thief, everyone begins to
check pockets and purses and locks, and no one will come near me. It doesn't
matter if I promise not to steal, no matter how I swear it—I am the world's
greatest thief, a master of subterfuge and deception! I cannot be trusted for a
moment. And of course, by the time I realized this, my childhood friends all
knew who and what I had become, and then all of Turnip Corner knew, and I was
an outcast in my own home!"

"That's
unfortunate ..
."
the Scholar began.

"So I left," she said. "I told
them I was going to travel, as the Chosen are said to do, and I left, and I
came to Quince Market and told them I was an orphan and made a new life for
myself, and I met Sezen, and he wooed me and wed me, and I'm
happy
here!"