The Ninth Talisman (6 page)

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.”

The road crew did indeed reach Mad Oak before dark—well before, in fact. The sun was still a hand's breadth above the ridge when the overseer looked at the swath they had cut right up to the boundary stone, a ten-foot swath of bare brown earth, and called, “Tools down!”

The crowd of villagers watching from safely inside the border burst into applause. They had been calling greetings, questions, and encouragement for some time as the road neared the town, and now that the job was complete they welcomed the road crew across the boundary with cheers, shouts, handshakes, and claps on the back. The idea of an open road all the way to Willowbank had captured their imaginations, though Sword was not entirely sure just what benefits they thought it would bring. After all, no one from Mad Oak had ever traveled much; the loss of the Willowbank Guide had been considered an inconvenience, but hardly a great tragedy.

Still, most of the town seemed to think the road was a wonder that would somehow make the world a better place, and had greeted the road-builders as heroes.

The two priestesses, however, had had to withdraw to the pavilion; the disturbed
ler
beyond the boundary shrine were making them both ill. Younger had been frighteningly pale when she withdrew, her sigil of office resembling a smear of blood. Elder's color had been better, but she was not steady on her feet, and Sword had helped her up the path.

Sword had gone back out for another conversation with the road-builders at one point, asked a few questions about the project and the Wizard Lord's actions elsewhere, and how other priests and priestesses had handled the resulting discomforts, but then he had come back up to the pavilion to check on the priestesses.

They were obviously suffering, but insisted there was nothing he could do. When Sword had spoken to the road crew they had expressed sympathy, but said that the pain would pass off in time, with no permanent harm done. The Wizard Lord had been building roads for four years now, and all those myriad displaced wild
ler
had not yet killed a priest; the tame
ler
had always protected their patrons.

Sword had left the priestesses in the rocking chairs by the unlit hearth, and had gone out to the pavilion terrace to watch the celebration begin. He leaned over the rail and peered down as the road crew finished their work, and the cheering started.

He remembered once before when he had stood leaning on this rail, seven and a half years before, looking out across the trees below. That had been the night of that year's barley harvest celebration, when the Old Swordsman and two wizards had arrived in Mad Oak, seeking a volunteer to replace the aging member of the Chosen.

But that had been different. It had been a quiet evening at dusk, not a bright afternoon, and he had been looking straight out at the valley, not across the fields to the borders; enjoying the weather and thinking about his future, not watching what might be a change in the very nature of the town's existence. The crowd had been up here gathered around Brewer that night, drinking up the summer beer to make room for fresh wort, not down by the boundary shrine marveling at a new road.

Surely, he thought, he must have stood out here since then, but he could not think of a time when he had. His training in swordsmanship, his daily practice, the unhappy year he had spent traveling, his sour disposition upon his return—he had not spent much time in the pavilion at all, really. He recalled a few gatherings and meetings inside, including the conversation with Younger Priestess three years before that had led to his odd experience with the memories trapped in the village shrine, but he could not remember a single occasion when he took a moment to come out on the terrace and simply look down at the valley.

Seven and a half years ago he had agreed to become the Chosen Swordsman, and that had led in not much more than a year to his meeting
with the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills, atop that crude tower outside Split Reed. He had slain the Wizard Lord, avenging the murdered innocents of Stoneslope, and then he had come home to Mad Oak, hoping to never again have reason to leave.

And until now, he hadn't. The new Wizard Lord had done nothing to attract his attention or cause him concern, nor had any of the other Chosen visited to discuss anything. There was absolutely no evidence that the present Wizard Lord had murdered anyone or otherwise broken the strictures that he was expected to obey. The few reports that had reached Mad Oak had all seemed quite favorable.

But building roads, disturbing countless
ler
—while hardly a crime, that was not what was expected of the Wizard Lord. It was completely unanticipated, a thing that had never happened before. It
might
even be a sign of madness.

If the present Wizard Lord had gone mad, like the last, then he, like the last, must be removed. There had never been two Dark Lords so close together, Sword was fairly sure, but that did not mean it could never happen.

But building roads—if that was mad, could there be such a thing as beneficial madness? Those cheering townspeople down there clearly didn't see anything wrong with new roads, no matter what the wild
ler
might think. It wasn't as if anyone
liked
wild
ler,
they were a dangerous nuisance, something to be respected, but never loved. The loss of any link with Willowbank when the old guide retired had been an annoyance to many of the town's inhabitants, and they seemed delighted to have a new connection.

The two miserable priestesses, on the other hand, whatever they might think of the road itself, were suffering from its effects on the natural spirits of the land. Both seemed very ill, though they were somewhat vague about the exact nature of the illness. Younger Priestess had said the pain was in her soul, not her body.

If Elder Priestess was right about the road's creation releasing malignant ghosts into the community, then Sword thought others might also come to regret the road's arrival, as well.

But those effects would be temporary, wouldn't they? And when the
ghosts were laid and the disturbed
ler
scattered and harmony restored, the road would still be there. Anyone who wanted to would be able to walk to Willowbank in half a day.

And the road crew had told him that similar roads already stretched the length of Longvale, and all the way to Winterhome, under the cliffs east of the Midlands. Other roads were being built out to the coastal towns to the west, and into the southern hills. These projects had been under way for years. Surely, building any of those would have cast out
ler
just as much as this one had, yet road construction had continued. The aftereffects could not be so very dreadful, then.

The crowd of villagers and laborers was moving now, heading up to the pavilion to celebrate properly; Sword could see Flute and Fiddle hurrying to fetch their instruments, and probably to rouse Drum and Sword's sister Harp. There would be music and dancing, and someone would undoubtedly convince Brewer to roll out a barrel or two of his best.

Sword had not done much dancing of late. His experiences as one of the Chosen had not given him anything to dance about.

Perhaps, though, that was a mistake. Perhaps it was time he cheered up. This road—it was a change, certainly, a big one, but wasn't it a change for the better? Couldn't a Wizard Lord use his power not just to protect Barokan from storms and outlaws, but to improve life for ordinary people?

Sword did not remember hearing of any Wizard Lord who had ever done that, but why not?

Those disturbed
ler
and the discomfort they caused the priestesses would fade soon enough, while the road would remain. Anyone who wanted to travel to Willowbank or beyond could do so, even though the last Willowbank guide had retired without training a successor. Oh, a few
ara
feathers might be a good idea, to ward off hostile
ler
to either side, but there would be a
road,
a clear and open route to follow. And presumably it would, in time, have
ler
of its own, and as with nearly all man-made things, those
ler
would be cooperative and helpful.
Ler
always reflected the nature of the objects they ensouled, so that a hammer's
ler
helped it strike hard and true, a knife's
ler
helped it cut,
and a road's
ler
would, it must be assumed, guide travelers' feet to their destination.

Of course, a knife's
ler
sometimes thirsted for blood, since that, too, was in the nature of a blade; Sword's mother had thrown away at least one outwardly good knife because it insisted on nicking fingers at every opportunity. A road's
ler
might have some unwanted aspects, but really, they could hardly be as dangerous as the wild
ler
of the forest.

Perhaps the
ler
of the road would coax people to travel, to wander, to hunger to see what lay beyond the next bend.

In fact, Sword found himself thinking now, when surely the road's
ler
could be only half-formed at best, that it was time he did some more traveling himself. And it was obvious where he would go—down the new road to Winterhome, to talk with the Wizard Lord, and perhaps meet with some of the other Chosen.

He had briefly seen Winterhome before, years ago, during the reign of the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills. Likewise, he had met the Wizard Lord before, when the man was simply the Red Wizard, an ordinary member of the Council of Immortals. The Red Wizard had even visited Mad Oak, when Sword was preparing to claim his place among the Chosen.

It would be interesting to see how both Winterhome and the wizard had changed.

And then the cheering crowd was spilling into the pavilion, shouting and laughing, and the time for serious thought was past; this was a time to join in the celebration. Within minutes a barrel was rolled out, cakes were fetched, and the music began.

Sword made a halfhearted effort to join in, but did not dance much. He took a few quick turns with Younger Priestess in an attempt to take her mind off the disturbed and scattered
ler,
but she quickly regretted the motion and insisted on returning to her chair. He danced one gavotte with young Potter, who had only recently finally escaped her childhood nickname of Mudpie. Mostly, though, he stood and watched, and the sword on his hip was enough to deter anyone who might have tried to intrude on his thoughts or drag him into the festivities.

The men of the road crew were pleasant enough company, and while
they were eager to dance with the village women they took no unwelcome liberties, so far as Sword could see. Perhaps they were too tired to make trouble after the day's labor.

The idea that some of them might be seriously interested in taking Mad Oak women as wives occurred to Sword. That would be . . . odd.

Normally, people in Longvale married within their own village, since there were so few people who traveled, but with this road open that might change. It would be easy for men from Mad Oak to go courting in Willowbank, or men from Willowbank to come to Mad Oak, and everyone knew that strangers were more interesting than the same old people one had grown up with. That exotic appeal had meant that the local girls had often flirted with guides and bargemen, but only rarely had such flirting led to marriage; the unsettled life of such men held little appeal for most people.

A road that let ordinary folk travel between towns might be very different, though. A farmer from strange and distant Willowbank might seem more attractive than a farmer from dull old Mad Oak, and the road would make it easy for such strangers to visit. Strangers had been rare before, but that might be about to change.

In fact, this road crew was probably the largest group of strangers ever to be seen in Mad Oak. Sword wondered whether they themselves realized that.

He did not speak to any of the road-builders directly, having asked his share of questions earlier and having no desire to spoil anyone's fun, but he listened with interest when any of their conversations happened to take place nearby. He did not hear anyone mention any changes in courting behavior, but he
did
hear some of the foreigners talk about traders bringing goods up from the south or west.