Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 (30 page)

"Deceiving your husband?" the Seer
asked.

"No!" Merrilin turned to face her.
"I told him, before we were married. He knows all about it—and he doesn't
care.

He loves me, no matter what silly oaths I may
have taken, and that's why
I'm
staying right here, with him and with our children. You can go kill the Wizard
Lord if you want, but you'll have to do it without my help."

"Why haven't you passed on the role, if
you find it unsuitable?" the Scholar asked.

"And inflict it on someone else? Anyone who
can be trusted with it wouldn't want it, and anyone who wants it shouldn't have
it. And there are times—do you have any children?"

"Not that I know of," the Scholar
replied.

"Well, there are times when it
is
useful for a mother to know how to
open things, how to take things from their
owners, and so on. But when the children are grown, then I
will
find a wizard and
choose someone else, and free myself of this curse."

"The Wizard Lord slaughtered an entire
town," the Seer said angrily. "Men, women, and children, down to the
babes in their cradles. Your so-called curse can help us avenge them, and
prevent him from ever doing it again."

Merrilin hesitated.

"He did?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Stoneslope, in the Galbek Hills."
"I never heard of it."

No one had an immediate response to that, and
after a moment Merrilin added, "It isn't any of my business. I never
heard of this place. It's all a long way off."

"But you're one
of the Chosen," the Archer said. "We're supposed to protect
everyone
from the Wizard
Lord."

"You said he
already
destroyed this
town."

The Archer looked to Breaker for support.

"He did," Breaker said. "And
we need to avenge them and make sure he never does it again somewhere else.
Next time it might be my home, or yours."

"There's no reason for him to hurt
anyone here," Merrilin said. "We never bothered him. I've never even
seen
him. Why would he
bother us?"

"Because he's mad," the Archer
said. "There's no telling
what
he'll
do!" "Who says so?"
"We
do!"

"And why should I believe you?"

"Because we're the Chosen! And so are
you!"

"I don't want to be, anymore."

"Then you should pass the talisman
on," the Seer said. "Find a wizard and arrange it."

" 'Find a wizard'? Where? I haven't seen
a wizard since I first accepted that thing! And I can't go looking for one; I
have a family to care for."

That caught Breaker's
attention—she hadn't seen a wizard in all those years? While it was true that
wizards seemed to be very scarce in the Midlands, hadn't the Old Swordsman
said that wizards checked on t
he Chosen every so often?

If so, they presumably must have missed one.

And Breaker hadn't seen a wizard since the
day after he became the Chosen Swordsman; was that significant? Wizards seemed
less common than he had expected.

But that had nothing to do with the Thief's
reluctance to join them.

For a moment the five of them stared at her;
then the Scholar said, "The next time we meet a wizard, we'll tell him
you'd like to hand on the responsibility. I'm sure the Council will send
someone to attend to it."

"I
..."
Merrilin hesitated, looking from one to the next, then shrugged. "Good. Do
that, then. But I'm not coming with you."

"Fair enough," the Scholar said.

"No, it isn't!" the Archer
protested. "She has an obligation! A role to fill!"

"I think we can manage without
her," the Scholar replied. "The Chosen have before, after all."

The Archer had opened his mouth to argue, but
then stopped. "They have?" he said.

"Three times," the Scholar said.
"The first two Dark Lords were deposed before the first Thief was chosen, and
in the three hundred and fifth year of the Wizard Lords, the Dark Lord of
Kamith t'Daru killed the Thief before the Chosen had gathered to oppose
him." "He did?"

"You see? I
can't risk it!" Merrilin said. "Now, go away, all of you!" She
turne
d
to go inside.

"You knew this might happen when you
first agreed," the Seer called angrily.

"No, I did not," Merrilin retorted
over her shoulder. "We had a wise and honorable Wizard Lord, and there
hadn't been a bad one in a hundred years! I didn't think there would ever be
another Dark Lord. If I had, I'd never have let myself be talked into
anything—and I am not letting myself be talked into anything now. Now, go away,
all of you!" She stamped into her house and slammed the door.

The five of them
stood
for
a moment; then the Archer asked, "Should I go in after her?"

The Scholar, rather than replying, asked the
Seer, "Where is Boss?"

The Seer blinked, then looked at him, and
pointed to the east. "That way," she said. "Near
Winterhome." "Is he with the Beauty, then?"

The Seer shook her head. "No. But
they're not far apart."

"Then perhaps we should just go find
Boss, and if he thinks we need the Thief, we can stop here on the way to the
Galbek Hills. It
is
almost on the way, isn't it?"

The Seer glanced to the southwest—toward the
Wizard Lord, Breaker was sure—and then to the east. She nodded.

"Almost," she agreed. "I think
you're right. Let Boss decide."

"Then I shouldn't go in?" the
Archer asked, audibly disappointed.

"No, of course not," Breaker said.
"It's her home. She has children in there—you'd scare them half to death.
And we can't
force
her to help—how would
that
work? She'd probably
just get some of us killed." He nodded at the others. "Seer's right.
Let the Leader decide what to do about her."

"I don't like it," the Archer said.

"I thought you were the one who said the
two of us should go kill the Wizard Lord by ourselves!"

"I.. . well, you . . . Urn." The
Archer considered that for a moment. He grimaced. "Fine, then. Let's go to
Winterhome. Where do we find a guide for the next leg?"

 
By the time they first glimpsed the pennants
of Winiterhome the Eastern Cliffs towered far above them I and seemed to block
out half the sky ahead. The sun had not become visible until well after dawn
that morning, and they had begun the day's walk in the shadow of the cliffs.

The experience was a
strange one—predawn gloom on the ground, but a bright blue sky above. Breaker
had seen similar conditions down by the river below Mad Oak sometimes, when he
wandered through the ridge's shadow at just the right time, but there it had
been just a matter of minutes before the sun broke over the ridgetop and full
day arrived. Here, the sun did not appear until well after the sky had turned
blue and the western world
come alight.

And when at last the
sun did clear the clifftops it was as if the travelers had suddenly been flung
from dawn to midday—the temperature seemed to soar, and the whole world around
them to blaze up in color and light, while the still-shaded terr
ain ahead was
plunged into darkness as their eyes adjusted.

Their guide on this
route was a tall, thin man who wore an entire crest of white
ara
feathers rather than a mere decorated hat, the feathers' curling tips
fluttering above his head as he marched
up the gentle but increasingly rocky slope
that seemed to extend endlessly eastward. When Breaker glimpsed the flutter of
a pennant deep in the shadows ahead he thought at first that it was one of the
guide's feathers, but then he realized that what he saw moving was red and
gold, not white.

"Is that a bird?" he asked,
pointing.

"It's a flag," the Archer said.
"There are more of them farther on, see?"

"Pennants," the Scholar said,
peering into the gloom. "The Uplanders use them to mark each clan's
holdings."

"Are the Uplanders here, then?"
Breaker glanced around; the weather was pleasantly cool, but definitely not yet
winter. The world around them was still more green than brown, and a few late
wildflowers bloomed here and there.

"No—they would still be atop the cliffs,
though perhaps the earliest are making their way toward us. The pennants are so
they can find the right place when they come down for the winter."

"Don't they get tattered and faded, if
they fly constantly from spring to autumn?"

"The Host People take care of them
somehow, I suppose."

"Who are the Host People?" the
Archer asked, turning. "I know the Uplanders are the people who live atop
the cliffs and come down to shelter for the winter, but I've never heard of the
Host People."

Breaker wondered where the Archer was from,
that he had never heard of the Host People—in Mad Oak everyone knew how even
the Uplanders could not survive winters on the plateau, and that the Host
People readied Winterhome for them each year.

"Well, look at
the place—those buildings the flags are on? Someone has to take care of those
the rest of the year," the Scholar explained. "And someone has to set
up the markets where the Uplanders buy their supplies, and make everything
ready for them, and stock the warehouses and
granaries to see them through the winter.
That's the Host People. They live in Winterhome year-round."

"Wait a
minute." The Archer stopped walking. "You mean this place we're
going, Winterhome—it's where the
Uplanders
spend the
winter?"

"Yes, of course."

"But I thought they weren't subject to
the Wizard Lord! What would Boss and the Beauty be doing there?"

"No, no," the Scholar said.
"The
Uplands
aren't subject to the Wizard
Lord—his authority stops at the cliffs, just as Barokan does. You're quite
right about that. But the Uplanders are subject to the same laws as anyone
else in Barokan when they come down here for the winter. Winterhome doesn't get
any special treatment—well, no more so than anywhere else; naturally, it has
its own
ler
and its own prie
sthood and so on."

"But
..."
The Archer fell in step beside the Scholar, while Breaker walked on the other
side. For a moment he fumbled for words, while the other two men waited.

"The stories I heard as a child,"
the Archer said finally, "said that the Uplanders had climbed the cliffs
to get away from the whole system of priests and priesthoods—that the land of
the great plateau doesn't have
ler
the way
Barokan does, it's dead and barren, without soul or spirit, and the Uplanders
like
it like that. That's
supposed to be why there are no trees up
there, just grassland and
ara,
and why
ara
feathers are protection against hostile
ler
—because
ara
are the only living creatures with no
ler
of their own, and the feathers shield them from any
ler
that might want
to invade and possess them."

"Yes, I've heard
that story, among others," the Scholar agreed. "But I discover that I
can't recall the details of any of the accounts that say there are no spirits
in the Uplands. I therefore believe there may well be
ler
ato
p
the cliffs, and the Uplanders may well have priests—but they don't speak of
these things to outsiders, so I can't say for certain."

"Wouldn't it be
easy to tell, though?" Breaker asked. "You've been in a lerless
place, when we stayed in the guesthouses
in Seven Sides; you know what it's like. Couldn't
you climb the cliffs and see whether the plateau has that same dead
feeling?"

The Scholar looked at him, then looked to the
east. He pointed.

"Climb
that?"
he said.

Breaker saw his point—the cliffs loomed over
them like a dark wall across the world, impossibly high and forbidding,
blotting out the eastern sky. Still, everyone knew there was a way up on the
far side of Winterhome, where a portion of the cliff had crumbled and a path
had been made. "The Laplanders do it every year," he pointed out.

"The Uplanders have far better reasons
than I!"

Breaker was not entirely convinced—after all,
the Scholar was supposed to learn everything he could about the entire world.
Before he could argue, however, the Scholar turned to the Archer and said,
"At any rate, whatever may hold true in the Uplands, the Host People have
priests and
ler
just like anyone else, and the Uplanders live by their rules during the
winter."

"But if they fled to the Uplands to
escape the priests .
.."

"Apparently, if they did, then they
found Upland winters to be even worse than priests."

Breaker grimaced. He thought that would
depend
which
priests. Presumably
the priesthood of the Host People was not particularly dreadful.

"And be glad they are," the Scholar
added. "Else we would have no
ara
feathers, nor beaks nor eggs nor meat, nor
the hollow bones. The Uplanders bring those down to trade, but I doubt they
would bother if they were not coming down to shelter here."

By this time the party was past the customary
boundary shrine and approaching the first of several immense buildings. It was
constructed with massive stone walls rising for two stories, and a third story
of wood and plaster atop that, all beneath a steep overhanging roof; the windows
were all shuttered and barred, save for a few on the top floor. A long red
pennant bearing an elaborate golden design flew from a pole at the eastern
gable;
Breaker could see that the heart of the design was a running bird,
presumably an
ara.

And beyond
this first structure
stood another, similar in outline but different in detail, flying a red banner
that showed three golden hawks.

And beyond that was a
third, whose pennant bore a crown and spear, and across the road from it a
fourth with a dragon banner
, and so on, deep into the cliffs' shadows.

And with each of
these great buildings, the road in front showed more wear. When at last the sun
broke over the clifftops Breaker could see that the road ahead grew ever wider
as it climbed the slope to the east,
and that it was churned into mud for as far
as he could see.

T would guess preparations are being made for
the Uplanders' arrival," the Scholar remarked.

"Boss is still down here, though,"
the Seer said. "That way." She pointed ahead and to the right.

"What about the Beauty?" the Archer
asked.

"That way," the Seer replied,
pointing ahead and to the left.

"So they're both staying with the Host
People?"

"So it would seem."

"I wonder why?" Breaker said.

"Well, the Beauty has lived here for
years," the Seer said. "I have no idea why Boss is here."

"Which one do we find first?" the
Archer asked.

"Boss," the Seer replied.
"He's the Leader."

The Speaker interrupted her perpetual
mumbling to say, "Farash inith Kerra das Bik abba Terrul sinna Oppor
carries the talisman of the Leader of the Chosen, but the
ler
say he has never
truly led anyone."

"Well, he's never had a
reason
to," the Seer
retorted.

"Until now," the Archer said.

"He has used his magic, and called upon
the
ler
bound to him," the Speaker said. "He has
cajoled and wheedled
and deceived, planned and devised, seduced and appeased, ordered and
commanded, but never truly led."

"That doesn't sound good," Breaker
said uneasily.

"Oh, ignore her," the Seer said.
"I've known Boss for ten years, since he wasn't much older than you are,
and he's a decent enough man."

Breaker glanced at the Speaker, but having
said her piece she was now bent over, hands over her ears, reacting to some
other unheard voice by muttering "No, no, never that, no, no, never,"
endlessly.

He could have interrupted her mumbling and
asked her to say more, but as usual, her behavior put him off.

They had been
traveling together for some time now, and Breaker knew that she was not insane,
despite appearances, but at times it was difficult to remember that. It was
hard to believe that she had lived fourteen years under this constant barrage
of inhuman chatter without genuinely going mad. Unlike the Archer or himself,
the Speaker had no daily task she had to perform to satisfy her
ler;
instead the requirement was that she could never stop hearing them,
could not simply learn to ignore them. How she slept was a mystery, how she
retained her sanity a much greater one. Breaker knew that he should listen to
her when she spoke, but he was never comforta
ble doing so.