Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 (3 page)

"But I won't
need
to kill anyone!
There aren't any more Dark Lords!"

"But you'll have agreed to do it if a
Dark Lord happens." "I suppose, but. .." "You'll be a
killer."

"I'll be a Chosen Hero, and yes, that
might mean killing someone, but only those who deserve to die. What's wrong
with that?"

His mother stared at him for another moment,
then threw up her hands with an exasperated "Oooohhhh!" and stamped
out of the room.

Breaker watched her go, genuinely puzzled.
Yes, the Swordsman and the other Chosen killed people, when it became
necessary, but they were
heroes;
it was
part of the job. His mother knew that; she had certainly told him enough
stories about heroes who slew men and monsters right and left. She had told
stories about the horrible vengeance Wizard Lords enacted on rogue wizards and
other fugitives with great relish, including plenty of gruesome details, and
she never seemed to think there was anything wrong with
that.

How was it any
different if her son be
came the Swordsman?

Then his gaze fell, and he saw that Fidget
and Spider were staring at him.

"Oh, shut up," he said.

"I didn't say a word!" Fidget
protested.

"I didn't, either," Spider said.
"It wasn't us. Are
ler
talking to you?"

"No," Breaker snapped. "I'm not
a priest or a wizard." "Will you be if you become the
Swordsman?" Breaker started to say no, then stopped. "I don't
know," he admitted.

"Would you really kill people?"

"Only bad wizards," Breaker assured
her. "Not
real
people. No one from Mad Oa
k."

Spider nodded a solemn acceptance of this;
Fidget looked less certain, but Breaker left the subject at that as he began
rummaging through the cupboards for something to break his fast.

Spider and Fidget managed to maintain a
surprising and atypical silence while they ate; their mother did not return,
and when Breaker had taken the edge off his appetite he decided that she
wasn't
going
to return while he was there.

He still did not entirely understand the
reasons for her anger, but he knew better than to try to dissuade her; he had
never been able to talk her out of one of her moods. His father or Harp
sometimes could, but Breaker had never quite figured out how. As far as Breaker
was concerned, the best thing to do was to simply be somewhere else until his
mother had worked through her anger on her own. Accordingly, as soon as his
stomach stopped growling he waved a quick farewell to his sisters and headed
out of the house and up the slope toward the pavilion.

The Wizard Lord had provided
a dry night and a pleasantly cool day, and the sun was still low above the
distant eastern cliffs; wisps of morning mist lingered in the trees and fields.
Breaker found no reason to hurry. He ambled past the smithy and the carpenters'
shops, then took the middle path
under the pavilion terrace, stretching his
legs to skip every second stone. He called a greeting to the brewmaster and
Younger Priestess as he passed the shadowy door to the cellars; he could hear
rattling and sloshing, and the priestess speaking to
ler
in their own language, presumably negotiating with them for all to go
well with this new batch of beer.

No one returned his call,
but that was no surprise; they were busy. He emerged from the shadows into the
slanting sun and turned to mount the southern steps. At the top he turned
again, and slouched into the pavilion itself.

Last night's debris
had largely been cleared away, the floor swept, and he wondered whether some of
the villagers had risen early to deal with this, or whether Elder had talked
some of the
ler
into taking care of it.

Then he noticed the old woman seated by the
flickering hearthfire, and wondered instead whether the wizards had used their
magic.

But a wizard's magic, like a priest's, still
depended on the cooperation of
ler
—wizards just
used different
ler, ler
not tied to a specific place. A priest could call on the spirits of
earth and tree, field and stream, root and branch, spirits bound to their own
corner of the world, while a wizard controlled spirits of wind and fire, light
and da
rkness,
spirits that could roam freely wherever their fancy—or the wizard's
orders—might take them.

And of course,
priests generally
asked
the
ler
for favors, and bargained with them, where
wizards were said to bind them and compel them.

Elder might have summoned the pavilion's own
ler,
the spirits of plank and stone that dwelt in the structure itself, or
the
ler
of the surrounding trees, or of the mice and
insects and other creatures that undoubtedly lived beneath the building; the
wizards could have summ
oned a wind from halfway across the world to blow away the dust and
spilled beer. Either way, the floor was swept.

As he stood there considering this the old
woman, the female wizard, looked up and saw him.

"Ah, boy," she said. "Come
here, would you?"

Breaker hesitated—like most villagers he
avoided strangers, and this woman was not merely a stranger, but a wizard. Not
only might she unwittingly anger the local
ler
through ignorance of their ways or her mere presence, but she had
ler
of her own at her bec
k and call, strange
ler
not bound to Mad Oak
or its surroundings.

But that was all the more reason not to be
rude to her, and if he was to become the world's greatest swordsman, one of the
Chosen, one of the assigned heroes who would defend Barokan should the Wizard
Lord go mad, then he would presumably need to deal with strangers, and even
with wizards, regularly. He would need to get over his reluctance. He squared
his shoulders and marched across the room to her.

She gestured at an
empty chair, and he s
at down beside her.

For a moment the two of them sat silently,
looking at one another while trying not to stare rudely; then she asked,
"I know you don't use true names here in Mad Oak, but what do they call
you?"

"Breaker," he said.

She grimaced. "And what do you
break?" she asked. "Not heads, I hope."

Breaker smiled.
"No," he said. "My mother's dishes, the poles for the beans,
that sort of thing. I was clumsy as a child; my father said it was because I
was growing so fast that my body had to keep relearni
ng how to
move."

"I'm not sure
that's much better," the wizard said. "A head-breaking temper would
be a bad thing in a swordsman, but a
clumsy
swordsman might be even worse."

"I'm not clumsy now," Breaker said.
"Ask Little Weaver, or Curly."

"Who are they?"

"The girls I danced with last night.
They'll tell you that I've caught up with my growth." "So you
remember last night, then?" "Most of it."

"The beer hasn't washed it all away? You
remember the dancing—do you remember what you spoke of with my companions before
the music began?"

"You mean about becoming the Swordsman?
Yes, I remember."

"And do you still want to take on the
role?"

Breaker hesitated, remembering his mother's
words, her hostile face. "I'm not sure," he said. "I don't want
to be a killer."

"Well, that's all right, then," the
wizard said. "We don't want you running off and putting a blade through
the Wizard Lord on a whim; killing a man is serious business, killing a wizard
even more so, killing the Wizard Lord most of all. We want a swordsman who is
reluctant to act, who will give even the darkest Lord a fair chance to depart
in peace—but who is ready to do what is necessary if the Lord will not
yield."

Breaker blinked at her. "Depart in
peace?" he said. "Is that possible?"

"Certainly!" She smiled at him, and
he noticed a tooth was missing on one side. "As long as a corrupt Wizard
Lord is removed from power, why would anyone care how? In all the centuries of
the Wizard Lords' rule, there have been five slain by the Chosen—and three who
left of their own free will rather than face the Chosen, giving their talismans
and oaths over to the Council of Immortals and allowing a new Wizard Lord to
take power."

Breaker gazed
silently at her for a long moment, then said, "I'm sorry; I thought I
understood the system and knew about the Dark Lords, but it seems I was
mistaken.
Eight
Dark Lords? I had only heard of four, I think. And
who or what is the Council of Immortals? I heard it mentioned last night, but I
admit I don't know what it is." He grimaced. "
I begin to think I
was far too hasty in saying I might want to be one of the Chosen."

The smile vanished, and the wizard sighed.

"There is a great deal of history
involved," she said. "And far too many complicated rules have
accumulated. It all started out very simple, but of course it couldn't
stay
simple."

"But why not?"

"Because it's done by people," the
wizard said. "We can never leave anything alone; we always meddle, and
adjust, and repair." She straightened in her chair. "So then,
Breaker," she said, "what
do
you know of the Wizard Lords, and the Chosen
Heroes?"

Breaker hesitated. He had heard the stories
as a child, but told in childish terms, and he did not want to sound childish
to this woman. She seemed to be treating him as an adult, and he did not want
to lose that respect. He would tell the story as he remembered it, but not
necessarily in the same words.

"More than six hundred
years ago," he began, "a group of wizards decided that Barokan would
be a happier land if a single person ruled it all, from the Eastern Cliffs to
the Western Isles, to put an end to destructive disputes between
wizards—wicked wizards and magical duels had laid waste to large areas and
killed many innocent people, and everyone agreed it had to be stopped, and
these wiza
rds
thought that setting up a single ruler was the best way to stop it. They chose
one of their number to be this ruler, the first Wizard Lord, and bestowed upon
him much of their combined magic, binding to him the most powerful
ler
known to humanity, including mastery of the skies and wind.

"With so much magic at
his disposal none could stand against the Wizard Lord, and he brought peace to
all the lands from cliffs to sea, and reigned well for many years. He hunted
down and slew any wizard who preyed on
the innocent, and arbitrated disputes to
prevent magical duels. In time he grew old and tired, and he gave up his power
and withdrew from the world, and named another wizard his successor as Wizard
Lord. He, too, reigned long and well before going peacefully into retirement.

"But the third Wizard
Lord, although he had feigned otherwise, had an evil heart, and once he was in
power he began to kill his enemies and to steal whatever he saw that caught his
fancy, and to hunt down and slaughter
all
other wiza
rds so that they
could not threaten his rule, rather than just the few who made trouble. But a
few of the surviving wizards, although they could not face the Wizard Lord's
overwhelming magic directly, devised a scheme to bring him down. They chose a
few ordinary people and granted them magical abilities that the evil Lord could
not counter, and these Chosen Heroes were able to confront and slay the Wizard
Lord, though most of them died in the process. And when it was all over, a new
Wizard Lord was chosen—but the surviving heroes also found successors, for
themselves and their slain comrades, and let it be known that henceforth any
Wizard Lord who violated the trust of the people of Barokan would be slain, as
the third one, now called the Dark Lord of the Midlands, was.