Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 (24 page)

'This infant never taunted or tormented
you," the Seer said, holding up the tiny skull.

"Her father did!" the crow
exclaimed. "Or at any rate, her mother's husband; I would not be surprised
to learn someone else had sired the whore's brat."

Breaker's blood ran cold at that. "Then
you know who this was?" the Seer said. "You killed them
deliberately?"

"Of course I
knew who it was! I sent my spies and watched them for more than a year before I
brought my vengeance upon them; I had to plan, to prepare. I knew that people
like you,
you
Chosen, might not approve, might not understand that I
needed
to do this for the sake of justice, and so I wanted to ensure that the
outside world would never know what I did here. I killed the guides, father and
daughter and grandson, to cut Stoneslo
pe's ties to the rest of Barokan, to the
decent
part of the world,
so that I could do as I pleased to the filth that lived here, and I made sure I
knew who every soul in the village was, so that I could be certain none escaped
my wrath."

Breaker, already strained by the oppressive
ler,
went numb with horror as he listened to this speech; he wished he could
convince himself that it was merely a nightmare, and certainly the talking crow
seemed dreamlike, but his rain-drenched clothes and the mud beneath his f
eet were much too
real to be so conveniently dismissed. He stared silently at the bird.

"And did everyone in Stoneslope deserve
to die, then?" the Scholar asked. "Were there none who had taken your
side, or even stayed aloof, when you were a child here?"

"None!" the crow squawked.
"None, none!"

"You had no family here?" the Seer
asked.

"I told you, my parents were dead!"

"But who took you in after your father's
death? What of the town's priesthood, and the
ler?
Didn't they defend
you, as one of their own?"

"Does it matter? They're all dead, five
years dead. And I had
sworn,
by the
ler,
that I would take
revenge. I had no choice."

"You hadn't sworn revenge on
everyone,
had you?"
"Yes! I had! Those who didn't torture me allowed it to continue!"

"How
..
." Breaker's voice came out almost as much a croak as the crow's; he
swallowed, and tried again. "How did you do it?" he asked.

The crow cocked its
head. "You don't want to know," it said. "I'm the Wizard Lord,
master of wind and fire and steel—do you really want
the details?"

"I think we would like to know whether
you deliberately tormented any of them, or whether you made their deaths as
quick and easy as you could," the Scholar said. "As a matter of
record, you understand."

"I struck them down with a plague
first," the crow replied. "So they could not flee. When all were in
their beds and many dying I sent fires to cleanse, and storm winds to whip the
flames, then rain to douse the flames and cool the ashes. Then I came myself,
not in this crow or any other such puppet, but in my own flesh, with some of
my creatures, to make sure the job was done. I chopped the heads off anyone who
appeared intact enough that a spark of life might possibly have remained, and
then I left them here to rot. I did not taunt or torture anyone; I would not
stoop to that level. I was ridding Barokan of a blight, not taking pleasure in
anyone's suffering."

Breaker thought he could hear a note of
satisfaction in these words, even spoken in the crow's unnatural squawking
voice.

For a moment no one replied; then the crow
asked, "And will you call me mad or evil now, and seek to slay me?"

"I don't
know," the Seer said, before the others could speak. "We will need
time to consider the matter, and we should confer with the rest of the Chosen.
W
e
are three out of eight, less than half the total—it is not our place to make
the decision."

Breaker turned to stare at her.

"I don't want to kill you," the
crow said. "But I will if I must, even though it would destroy a portion
of my own power."

"And it would certainly mean that the
other Chosen would vote to kill you," the Scholar said. "Slaying any
of the Chosen is one of the things absolutely forbidden to a Wizard
Lord."

"And not just
the other Chosen would seek to avenge you, but the Council of Immo
rtals," the
crow agreed. "Even if I slew all eight of you, every wizard in Barokan
would be out for my blood, and I'd have almost no power left to oppose
them."

"I don't think
any of us want that," the Seer said. "But you know we'll need to tell
the others
about what you did here."

"And then the eight of you will decide
whether my vengeance was justice or madness, and if you choose to deem me mad,
then it will mean war between us, war to the death."

"It needn't be to the death. You could
resign your title," the Scholar suggested, "as the Dark Lord of
Spider Marsh did, two hundred years ago."

"Perhaps," the crow croaked.
"Perhaps."

Then the bird twitched, flapped its wings,
cawed, and flew away.

Breaker did not need to hear the Seer's words
to know that the Wizard Lord was gone—for the moment.

And he knew now what the ghosts of
Stoneslope's murdered inhabitants wanted.

They wanted justice—or no, that was not quite
right.

They wanted
revenge.

They were eager to
get out of Stoneslope, away from those haunted, overgrown ruins and the
restless souls of slaughtered innocents, souls who had had no surviving priests
to guide them from this world to the next; there was no need to find more
evidence when the Wizard Lord had admitted what he had done, almost
boasted of it. They
had left swiftly, eager to reach shelter elsewhere— anywhere but
Stoneslope—before full dark.

The journey back to
the nameless village was relatively uneventful. The mud underfoot seemed even
slicker than it naturally should be, and on
e vine draped itself around the Scholar's
throat with malicious intent, but careful walking and a swipe from Breaker's
sword disposed of these hazards.

They saw no animals
of any kind this time. Breaker wondered about that. What was the Wizard Lord
doing
?
What was he thinking? He knew they had seen Stoneslope, and he must know how
horrified they were, but he was not doing anything, so far as Breaker could
see. The clouds had scattered, the trail was less hostile—apparently he was
making no attempt to prevent them from reaching the outside world, even though
he must know they would tell others what they had seen.

What
was
he doing? Fortifying
his tower? Preparing magic to protect himself from their inevitable assault?

He considered asking the Seer, but a glance
at her expression convinced him not to address her—and in truth, he was not
sure he could speak calmly at the moment, as the emotions of the ghosts of
Stoneslope still lingered in his head, ready to burst out.

Besides, what if the
Wizard Lord was l
istening? Or what if ordinary
ler
were
listening, that might pass the word to others? Breaker knew that news could
sometimes spread through the land itself, without human intervention, and he
was not at all sure that they wanted this news to be turned loos
e just yet.

So he said nothing, the whole way back to the
nameless village.

The sun was low in the west and the priest
was waiting for them just beyond the boundary shrine when they emerged from the
forest; some
ler
must have informed him that they were co
ming. "You're
alive!" he said, without preamble.

"I certainly hope so," the Seer
muttered as she stumped past the black marker, ignoring the faces that peered
at them from the distant cottages.

"Did you expect the wild
ler
to kill us, or the Wizard Lord's
creatures, or what?" Breaker asked,
genuinely curious, as he paused and leaned against the weathered boundary
stone.

The priest shrugged.
"Who knows? All I knew was that no one had come alive from Stoneslope in
five years. Our
ler
had said something abou
t a plague—but the
ler
can be vague and
unreliable sometimes."

"Just like anyone else," the Seer
said, stopping some twenty feet inside the village and turning.

"There was a plague," the Scholar
said. "Stoneslope's people are all dead, and the secrets of their priests
presumably lost."

"Horrible, horrible! What can I do to
aid you, then?"

The three Chosen exchanged glances.

"A warm bath, a hot fire, a hot meal,
and a warm bed would be welcome," Breaker said.

"Of course, of course! I'll have them
prepared." The priest turned, and ran toward the village square in a thoroughly
undignified fashion, as the weary Chosen followed at a more leisurely pace.

The baths were not as
warm or as generous as Breaker would have liked, the fire was distressingly
smoky becau
se
the unnatural rain had soaked much of the village's stock of firewood, the meal
was just oatmeal, and the beds were straw ticks in the village's communal hay
barn that crunched and rustled underneath them, but the villagers did their
best to provide what the three had asked for. In exchange, once they had bathed
and before heading to their beds they described what they had found in
Stoneslope; for the most part they answered the villagers' questions as best
they could, but by unspoken mutual consent they never mentioned that the Wizard
Lord had been responsible for the plague or the subsequent fires. They were
not yet ready to tell all the world that a ninth Dark Lord now reigned over
Barokan. Breaker was not entirely sure of his own reasons, but he knew he did not
want to be the first to reveal the truth; he knew that once released, that
truth could never be recaptured, and that he did not know what the consequences
might be.

"I suppose no
one was well enough to fight the flames," Breaker said, when aske
d directly what
started the conflagration.

"Why didn't
their
ler
protect
them?" a girl of ten or so asked.

"Perhaps their priest angered the
ler
somehow," the
Seer suggested. "We don't really know. All we know is what we found."

"And you found your way there safely?"

"Easily,"
the Scholar said, setting down his half-eaten oatmeal. "The
ler
of the forest did try to hinder us, but their efforts were really
quite trivial. If anyone should care to negotiate new terms with the
ler
of Stoneslope, a new settle
ment might be established there."

Breaker stared at him in astonishment. No one
could live there until the ghosts were exorcised, the spirits of the dead
calmed and sent on their way! What was Lore thinking?

The Seer saw Breaker's expression and
gestured for silence.

The villagers stirred, muttering and
shuddering. "And risk another plague? I don't think so!" a woman
responded.

"And we have no idea how the priesthood
there operated, in any case," the priest said. "We don't know
whether they negotiated with the
ler,
or commanded them, or were enslaved by them.
Anyone trying to create a new priesthood would be risking his life if he chose
the wrong strategy."

No one could deny that—and Breaker supposed
the Scholar had known this would be the response. Still, his suggestion had
seemed bizarre.

When at last the crowd had dispersed, and the
three travelers had retired to the barn to sleep, Breaker asked quietly,
"Now what?"

"Now we gather the Chosen," the
Seer said. "The Speaker lives just a few days' travel northwest of here,
the Archer not much farther. The Thief lives in the eastern Midlands and the
Leader is traveling not far from there, while the Beauty lives in Winterhome.
We're fortunate that no one is in the northern valleys, or out on the islands,
or in the far marshes."

"That's assuming
they don't move around," the Scholar pointed out. "Just because most
of them are home at the moment doesn't mean they'll stay there. They may well
be
on the islands by
the time we catch up to them."

"We can send word somehow," the
Seer said. "Especially once we find the Speaker."

"But we're in the Galbek Hills,"
Breaker protested. "The Wizard Lord's tower is just a few miles away,
isn't it?"

"About thirty miles," the Seer
agreed, pointing to the southwest.

A little of the remembered fury of the ghosts
of Stoneslope scratched at Breaker. "But you want us to go wandering all
over Barokan, while the Wizard Lord builds up defenses and prepares for us,
instead of just going there
now
and killing him?"

The Seer sighed. "That's right,"
she said.

"You can go try
to kill him yourself, if you want," the Scholar said, "but you would
be acting alone, and the rest of us would feel no great need to do anything
about it if the Wizard Lord were to kill you in self-defense. Once we ha
ve agreed that he
must be removed,
then
any harm he does to you would bring our
collective wrath down upon his head, but now? Seer and I saw Stoneslope, and
felt the
ler
there— while I can't speak for her, I think killing
the Wizard Lord is more than justi
fied, it's essential. But we are only three;
the other five were not with us."

Breaker frowned. "The three of us could
go to his tower together," he said.

"Are you that eager to kill him?"

Breaker bit off his immediate reply of
"yes," and before he could say anything else the Seer spoke.

"Are you that eager to die?" she
asked. "He could kill us easily."

"But.
..
very well, then, would eight be so much more formidable than three? He could
kill
all
of us, just as he wiped out that village."

The Seer shook her head. "No," she
said. "He would destroy his own magic in the process, and the other
wizards would make quick work of him."

"And we are
immune to his magic, his diseases and fires," the Scholar added. "He
could undoubtedly kill us, but not in the same way
he slaughtered his
townsfolk."

"But
...
he could still kill us, surely."

"Three of us, yes," the Seer said
patiently. "But if the eight of us act together, he cannot kill us without
destroying his own power and leaving himself defenseless against the other
wizards. If he knows he faces all the Chosen he may see sense and surrender his
position without a fight; against three, that's far less likely."

Breaker wanted to
argue further, but he knew his companions were right. He had wanted to go and
get it over
with, to confront the Wizard Lord while the horrors of Stoneslope were
fresh in his mind, to avenge the dead swiftly, but he knew that would not work.
The Chosen were chosen to act
together,
and not in haste.

The idea that the Wizard Lord might surrender
peacefully, and not be punished for his butchery with death, did not suit
Breaker just now, but he knew intellectually that it might be best.

"The Speaker," he said. "You
want to find her first?" "She's the closest."

Breaker hesitated, then said, "I heard
she's mad."

The Seer and the Scholar exchanged glances.

"She wasn't when last we spoke,"
the Seer said, "but I can see how some might think she is. After all, she
can hear things no one else hears, and aside from priests, most people who hear
voices no one else can hear
are
mad."

"Is that what it is?" Breaker
asked. "I thought she could speak any tongue, I didn't know she heard
voices."

"She can hear, speak, and understand
every tongue in Barokan," the Seer explained. "And not just the human
ones. She hears the
ler,
the birds and beasts, spiders and flies,
earth and flame, the messages that wizards send one another on the
wind—everything. If she ever does go mad she'll have good reason, after living
with such a constant din!"