Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 (18 page)

"None at all."

"Nor I."

That was hardly a surprise. The Old Swordsman
had said she lived in Winterhome, at the base of the Eastern Cliffs where the
trail came down from the Uplands into Barokan, but Breaker was not sure how
reliable the old man had been. He had been vaguely hoping these people might
know more—if the Beauty were nearby, then visiting her, getting to know another
of the Chosen, might have been a good idea.

But she apparently wasn't, and before he
could say anything more the landlord was there, and the men fished out a few
coins to cover the cost of a platter of ham and vegetables.

As they did, Breaker was thinking over what
he had learned. The Leader, or Boss, or whatever he called himself, sounded
like a good strong man and a useful ally, worthy of being one of the Chosen,
but there was nothing to indicate that he would know much of anything about the
Wizard Lord. And the Speaker, if she was truly mad, would be useless.

The Scholar,
though—if he had been collecting gossip for years, he might well know more
about the Wizard Lord than anyone else. So far, Breaker had not heard a single
negative word about the current Wizard Lord from anyone but
the Old
Swordsman—but he was beginning to notice he hadn't heard anything
positive,
either. There were hundreds of stories about Wizard Lords righting
wrongs and saving lives and so on, but they were all about
former
Wizard Lords, not the current holder o
f the title.

Someone
must know something
about the man, and the Scholar was more likely than anyone else to be that one.

"When was the Scholar last in
Barrel?" Breaker asked.

The men looked at one another.

"Last summer, was it?"

"Spring. I'd just been planting the
north field."

"That's right—remember, he left just
before the priests started looking for the solstice sacrifice."

"Right. Last spring, then."

A year's head start was more than enough to
be discouraging, but Breaker had little else to guide his travels; he knew he
wanted to head generally southward, toward the Galbek Hills, but other than
that his plans were vague. He refused to be distracted by the mention of a
solstice sacrifice, and asked, "When he left, which way did he go?"

"Toward
Blackwell
."

The others nodded.

And the following morning Breaker passed by
an exceptionally ugly boundary shrine and headed southeast toward Blackwell.

 
Crossing the Midlands took almost half the
summer;
I
midsummer found
Breaker in the foothills on the southern edge of the plain, in a town called
Dog Pole—a name no one could explain. The local dialect was sufficiently
different from the language spoken in Longvale that Breaker was not entirely
sure he would have understood the explanation, in any case.

He had noticed as he
moved south that the names, for both towns and people, seemed to make less and
less sense. Some of them seemed little more than random syllables, rather than
descriptions. Most people used the beginnings of true names for each other,
as the people of
Greenwater had, but nicknames, often bizarre ones, were common; a complete
avoidance of true names, as in Mad Oak, was rare.

He had always
wondered what "Galbek" meant; he now suspected that it didn't mean
anything, but was just a meaning
less name given to a particular set of hills.
That seemed to be how these Southerners operated.

Of course, he
reminded himself, he wasn't really
in
the South yet, but only just approaching its
boundaries.

Along his way he had heard descriptions of
several of the other Chosen—the handsome Leader, the gossip-loving Scholar, the
mad Speaker, the short-tempered Archer, the motherly Seer. The Beauty and the
Thief remained completely unknown; no one would admit meeting either of them.

He had learned very
little
about
the Wizard Lord. Several people had told stories about the
previous
Wizard Lord— Breaker had not visited Spilled Basket, where he had made
his home, but he had passed within about twenty miles of it—or about others
even farther back, but hardly anyon
e knew anything about the present incumbent.
The most common response to questions was a shrug and a remark, "The
weather's been fine."

He wondered whether
the Old Swordsman's fears might have been completely baseless; certainly, he
saw no sign that anyon
e else suspected the Wizard Lord of any sort of misbehavior. No one
actually professed to
like
him, but
neither did they fear him. As far as Breaker could tell his journey to visit
the Wizard Lord at his home in the Galbek Hills was largely pointless, but
he was not inclined
to turn back yet; overall, he was enjoying the trip.

He had asked
sometimes about other wizards, as well, and had been surprised at how few
reports he heard about them. None seemed to make their homes in the Midlands,
or at least not i
n the portion of the Midlands he crossed; a few vague tales and legends
trickled in from the west and south, but Breaker was unsure how much credence
to give them. He supposed wizards preferred the less-crowded parts of Barokan,
but it still seemed somewhat odd.

He had encountered
hundreds of strange customs and unfamiliar rites in his traveling, and had
become largely inured to them. People did what they had to to live with the
ler,
and he was no longer surprised by any demands the spirits might make.
App
alled,
sometimes, but not surprised. He still had trouble believing that people would
willingly live in a community whose guardian
ler
demanded a human
sacrifice every spring, but he had encountered at least three such towns.

He had continued to follow reports of the
Scholar's presence, which had led him almost directly south—he was unsure
what to make of that, whether it was merely coincidence or something else at
work. He had gained some ground; the Scholar had reportedly passed through Dog
Pole in early spring, no more than three or four months ago.

The Seer had also come this way not so very
long ago; he wondered about that.

All in all, he was enjoying his journey, but
found it worrisome that he was not learning more about his own role in the
world.

One morning he was sitting at a battered
table in Dog Pole's one and only public house, wondering whether he should
continue following reports of the Scholar's route or
try to find his way
directly to the Galbek Hills, when the door opened.

He didn't look up at first; he was trying to
estimate how long it would take to get back to Mad Oak if he took
as
direct
a route as possible and only stayed
a
night in each town
along the way. If the snows didn't come early he might take another two months
to find the Wizard Lord
's
tower and still be
home . . .

"Swordsman?"

Startled, he looked up, his right hand
falling to the hilt of his sword. That had become a completely involuntary
habit, but one he could
not
break; he suspected it was part of the magic
his role entailed.

The speaker was a somewhat elderly man,
rather weathered-looking but still straight-backed and apparently vigorous,
clad in well-worn deerhide. "Yes?" Breaker said, returning his hand
to the tabletop.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," the
white-haired man said, holding out a hand; he spoke the Midlands dialect, but
with a thick southern accent. "I'm here to take you to Tumbled
Sheep."

Breaker blinked at him. "What?"

"I'm a guide—I know every road in the
hills from here to Crooked Valley. I'm here to take you to Tumbled Sheep— it's
a village about fifteen miles southeast of here."

Breaker frowned. "Who told you I want to
go to Tumbled Sheep?"
He
was tempted to
remark on the bizarre stupidity of naming a village "Tumbled Sheep,"
but restrained himself; that would just prolong a conversation he wanted to
end quickly.
He
wanted this person to go away and let him
think; he was in no great hurry to go anywhere but home, and did not think
Tumbled Sheep sounded like a promising destination.
He
guessed
the old man had heard the Swordsman was traveling the area, and wanted to earn
himself a guide's fee and the enhanced reputation that aiding any of the Chosen
might bring.

"The Seer," the guide said.

Breaker abruptly sat up straight, suddenly
attentive. "What?"

"Th
e Seer sent me to
fetch you; she and the Scholar are waiting for you in Tumbled Sheep."

"The .
..
They are? But how would they know I was here?"

The guide snorted. "There's a reason
they call her the Seer, you know."

Breaker had known, of course, that the Seer
had magical abilities, and always knew where the other Chosen were, but somehow
it had never occurred to him that she would be using that knowledge to find
him.

But he supposed it made sense.

"Why do they want me there?"

The guide smiled crookedly. "Swordsman,
she didn't tell me that, but she
did
say you might
not remember right away that you were
looking
for the Scholar, and
if so, I should remind you. Well, consider this your reminder—here's your
chance to talk to him."

That was true—but if they wanted to talk to
him, why hadn't they come to Dog Pole?

"But why Tumbled Sheep?"

"Because that's where they
are.
They didn't tell me
anything; they just sent me to get you and bring you there."

"Oh." He supposed it was perfectly
reasonable for the Seer and the Scholar to want to meet the new Swordsman—
after all, as the guide had pointed out,
he
had wanted to
meet
them.
Simple
curiosity was more than adequate to explain their interest.

And thinking about other possible
explanations, he very much hoped mere curiosity
was
the only motivation.
He stared at the guide for a moment longer, then rose. "Let me get my
bag."

Ten minutes later the two of them marched
past a boundary shrine, out of Dog Pole, and into the southern hills.

The rolling country was not as strange as the
flat plain of the Midlands, but in a way it was even more disorienting to
someone from the northern valleys; none of the hills seemed to line up into
ridges, but instead they thrust up here and there, apparently at random—and
every hill had its own
ler,
of course,
some of them visible as lights or mist or shadows, like the
ler
of Mad Oak. The guide led Breaker along a winding, circuitous route
that dodged most of these, but he stopped in a few spots to placate the local
spirits; in one case this required a libation from a wineskin he carried, at another
he recited an elaborately worded prayer, and so on.

In short, save for
the odd landscape, the journey was much like others Breaker had made in his
travels, and like those others it went smoothl
y, and late in the afternoon, as the sun
neared the western horizon, he and the guide made an uneventful arrival in the
town of Tumbled Sheep, which nestled beside a river at the foot of an unusually
steep hillside. Breaker supposed that the hillside was connected with the
silly name somehow.

The guide paused at
the boundary shrine only long enough to kneel briefly, then led Breaker to the
largest building in town, a wooden structure with wide but sagging porches on
every side. Breaker was unsure whether
it was a public house, a community center
like the pavilions in the northern valleys, or a temple to the local
ler,
but whatever it was, several people were sitting on the porches. They
had been chatting quietly when Breaker had first glimpsed them from we
ll beyond the
boundary shrine, but someone had spotted the approaching travelers, and now
every eye was focused on them, every tongue still.

A month or two before
that would have made him unbearably nervous, but his travels had accustomed
him to this sor
t of reception—it was not at all unusual. He ignored the stares as he
followed the guide around to the north porch and up the two low steps.

A woman rose at his
approach, a woman roughly his mother's age, but shorter and plumper, her hair
gone prematurely
silver-gray. She wore a white cotton tunic embroidered in red and
gold, and a long green wool skirt, both worn soft with long use; her hair hung
to her waist. The top of her head barely reached Breaker's chin, but she looked
boldly into his eyes, clearly not intimidated by his size. Her own eyes were
green and intense, her nose long and promi
nent; she was not
smiling. She did not look as if she smiled often.

She held out a hand. "Hello,
Swordsman," she said. "I'm the Seer."

Behind her a man got to his feet, a thin man
of medium height with a graying beard and a cheerful grin, clad in a long vest
of brown leather.

Breaker accepted the woman's hand and bowed
to her. "I am honored," he said.

"Oh, nonsense. You're one of the Chosen,
I'm one of the Chosen—we're equals, and there's no honor involved in meeting
me."