[19]

 They made good time on their northward journey, but to little initial avail; to their extreme annoyance the Seer reported one morning, as they marched across a broad and peaceful meadow behind a taciturn guide, that the Leader had packed up and headed east, moving farther away.

   "What does that idiot think he's doing?" the Archer complained.

   "He probably has no idea we're looking for him," the Seer said. "After all, how could he know? And better to the east than into the western marshes, or out to the islands."

   "He can't go too far," Breaker said. "Not to the east— he'll reach the cliffs." "Is there any way we can tell him we need to talk to him?" the Archer asked. "The way the Speaker sent me that message, perhaps?"

"I don't know of anything I can—no, be still—I don't know of any spirit I might convince to go so far," the Speaker said. "Even if I spoke a bird's true name, the compulsion would not last long enough to cover such a distance." She was walking ahead of the other four Chosen, close behind their hired guide, with her head down; every so often she started as some part of the surrounding landscape spoke to her, unheard by the others. "Perhaps we could find a wizard who could fly a message to him?" the Scholar suggested. "There are no wizards any closer to us than Boss is," the Seer reported.

"But isn't there some way we can contact them magically?" Breaker asked.

"I tried, days ago," the Seer said. "I had a talisman that was supposed to summon a wizard I know. No response."

   "We have to go as far as Winterhome to find the Beauty anyway, don't we?" Breaker asked. "He won't go any farther than that, will he?"

"You mean up on the plateau, above the cliffs?" The Seer shrugged. "I can't imagine why he would. If he does, though, we can't follow him—our magic won't work outside Varagan."

   "We could follow him," the Scholar said. "We'd just need to use more mundane methods."

   "/ don't know anything about tracking," the Seer said. "Do you?"

   "Well, a little," the Scholar said. "It does come up in certain stories, of course."

   "Why would he go somewhere his magic doesn't work?" the Archer asked. "He won't go up the cliffs."

   "We'll probably catch up with him in Winterhome," Breaker said. "And the Beauty, too."

   "You're really looking forward to getting a look at her, aren't you?" the Archer asked, grinning. He jabbed Breaker with an elbow as the two of them drew slightly ahead of the Scholar and the Seer. "Well, maybe we will, and maybe it'll be worth it. We'll see."

   "I'd like to see what she looks like, of course," Breaker agreed, as he trudged onward, "but mostly I want to get on with business. We need to remove the Wizard Lord, and the Seer says we can't do that without the Leader."

   The Archer glanced back over his shoulder, then leaned closer and said quietly, "You know, we don't need to do what the Seer says. We could turn around right now, just the two of us, and go kill the bastard. We don't need to go all the way to Winterhome just so Boss can tell us what we already know."

Breaker glanced at their guide, wondering if the bent little man had heard the Archer's words. "He'd see us coming, and probably kill us both," the Swordsman said. "The Seer is right about mat."

"We aren't that easy to kill."

"We aren't wizards, either. I agree he needs to be removed, but I'd like to survive the process."

"But we're the Chosen! He won't kill us—it would destroy his magic."

   Breaker sighed, and picked up his pace—he thought he would prefer the guide's company to the Archer's, and in any case the group was becoming uncomfortably spread out. "He's a human being—or at least he used to be, I

suppose it's not quite so certain anymore, but he still acts like one. If he's got a choice between being killed right

now, or giving up his magic and living a while longer and maybe talking his way out of it altogether—well, I don't expect him to stand there playing target."

   "But you think it'll work any better with eight of us, instead of two or three?" the Archer demanded, hurrying after him.

   "I don't know," Breaker admitted. "I'm beginning to wonder how our predecessors killed those five Dark Lords—how did it ever get that far? Why didn't they all resign, rather than fight to the death?"

   "Three did resign," the Scholar reminded him, from behind the two. "I think it's safe to conclude that the five who died were either completely irrational in their madness, or convinced they could win the battle somehow."

   "Or they were caught by surprise, and dead before they could react," the Archer suggested.

"That might be," the Scholar conceded. "Certainly, the Dark Lord of Kamith t'Daru was caught off-guard."

"That's the approach I'd prefer," the Archer said. "An arrow through the eye before he even knows we're near!"

   "We noticed," Breaker said dryly, as he approached the guide. "But the way it's supposed to operate is that the eight of us work as a team—a band of heroes, not a handful of assassins." As he spoke, Breaker wished that the five of them felt more like a team; he hoped that the Leader's presence would bring them together. That was perhaps his strongest reason for voting to find Boss before turning back toward the Galbek Hills.

"I don't see much of a difference," the Archer said. "In many languages there is no difference," the Speaker murmured.

Breaker glanced at her, startled. He found that very strange—how could a language not distinguish between defenders and predators?

   "Really," the Archer said, "if the idea is simply to remove a wizard who threatens all of Barokan, does it matter how it's done? Do we really need all this rigmarole gathering the Chosen?"

   "That's how it works," Breaker said. "That's the system that protects us all. The ler guard the world. The priests and wizards control the ler and guard us from any that turn hostile, the priests in our homelands, the wizards in the wider world. The Wizard Lord protects us against bad weather and bad men and any wizards who go bad, and the Chosen protect us when a Wizard Lord goes bad. That's how the Council of Immortals set it up, and it's why we're all here instead of safe at home with our families."

   The guide, who had apparently been listening to at least this speech, asked quietly, "And what happens if the Chosen go bad?"

   "That's why there are eight of us," the Scholar said. "If there's just one of us who goes mad, then the Wizard Lord or the other Chosen can deal with him."

   "And what if all eight of you go mad?"

   "How likely is it that eight of us would go mad?" the Seer responded, catching up.

   "If you travel together often, and go astray on certain routes, it's not that unlikely," the guide said.

   "We don't usually travel together," Breaker said—but he glanced around uneasily at the surrounding forest, aware that the spirits of the trees were watching him, and that some of them might well be just as mad and just as predatory as the Mad Oak back home.

   "The five of you are here," the guide said.

   "And this is the first time in the twenty years I've been the Scholar that we've had so many together," the Scholar said.

The guide glanced at him, startled.

"Then—you really are going to kill the Wizard Lord? This isn't just. . . But why? What did he do?"

"He wiped out an entire town," Breaker said. "He killed every man, woman, and child in it, deliberately."

The guide looked from face to face; the Speaker was listening to something off to the side that the others couldn't hear and didn't meet his eyes, but the Scholar and the Archer nodded.

"I didn't see it myself," the Archer admitted, "but they swear to it."

   "I did see it," the Scholar said. "So did Seer and Sword. We saw the bones and the burnt-out ruins, and felt the lingering spirits of the dead crying out for justice."

"Why did he do it?" the guide asked, obviously frightened. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Is he mad?"

"Revenge," Breaker said. "He wanted revenge."

"What?" The guide's expression was so astonished Breaker almost laughed. "Who could have harmed the

Wizard Lord so badly that he needed vengeance?"

   "He killed the people who had teased him as a child," the Scholar said. "And everyone else in town, while he was at it," Breaker said.

   "That's insane!" "That's why we're going to kill him," the Archer agreed. "And. . . " The guide paused and looked around, then leaned forward and whispered, "Does he know you know?" "He knows," the Seer said.

"Then—then isn't it dangerous? Isn't he likely to try to kill you before you kill him?"

   "Quite possibly," the Scholar said. "Though so far he hasn't tried." "Am / in danger, for guiding you?"

The Chosen glanced at one another. None of them had considered that possibility.

"I don't know," Breaker said. "I hope not." "But I could be?"

"He knows that if he harms any more innocents he'll only make it worse," the Archer said.

"But you're already planning to kill him! How could it be worse?"

   "Oh, so far we'd settle for his resignation," the Scholar said. "If he kills any more people, we may not give him that option."

"And . . . why are you going north? Isn't his tower to the south, in the Galbek Hills? You just came from there!" "We need to find the other three Chosen," the Seer said. "Or at least the Leader," Breaker said. "You know where he is?"

   "I do, yes," said the Seer. "And right now he's moving east, while we're just standing here talking. Can we move on?"

   "Oh!" The guide started. "Oh, of course." He looked around. "We need to bear to the right up ahead to avoid the ler of the ancient ants . . . " He started walking.

   The five Chosen followed.

   Six days later they were in a town called Dust Market, going through the cleansing ritual that the local ler required before permitting them to stay the night, when the Seer said, "He's gone past her—Stealth is now closer than Boss."

   "Stealth?" Breaker asked, as one of the naked priestesses poured a pitcher of scented water over his head. "The Thief," the Scholar explained. "Seer calls her Stealth."

   "Ah." Breaker would have nodded, but he was afraid he would get water in his eyes. "Lore, Boss, Blade, Babble, Bow, Stealth—but she's just Seer."

   The Scholar shrugged. "Why not? And Blade is gone— you're Sword now."

   "What do you call the Beauty?"

   "I've never met her," the Seer said. "I call her the Beauty."

That startled Breaker. "You've never met her?"

   "Not the present one. I knew the last one; we called her . . . well, we had a name for her. It wasn't a nice one, and I regret it now."

"How long has this one been Chosen?"

   The Seer glanced at the Scholar, but had to wait until most of the just-poured water had run off before he could reply.

   "Twenty-three years," Lore said.

   "That long? And you've never met her?"

"I've met her," the Scholar said. "She's been Chosen a little longer than I have. Not long after I became the Scholar she found me to ask a few questions about Barokan's history, and about the Uplanders. But I haven't seen her since." "I haven't met her," the Seer said. "I have spoken with her memories, but never seen her face," the Speaker said. Breaker wasn't sure how literally to take that; he glanced at the Archer, but then remembered that he had already admitted never meeting the Beauty.

"I'm surprised you haven't," he said.

"Don't be," the Seer said. "It's deliberate. I don't want to meet her—but we'll probably have to, now."

"I don't understand."

   "You don't need to. But you do need to help us decide— now that the Thief is closer than the Leader, do we go on chasing him, or do we talk to her first?"

   "You said you just wanted to get Boss and his magic," the Archer said, as the priestesses began distributing towels.

   "Historically, the Thief has sometimes been essential," the Scholar pointed out. "The Thief's magical talents with locks and stealth have been very useful in two of the five killings our predecessors carried out, and in the case of the Dark Lord of Goln Vleys, it's possible that the Swordsman might not have ever managed to gut him at all had the Thief not safely opened the seals on the fortress gate."

Breaker swallowed. Although he had become accustomed to talking about killing the Wizard Lord, every so often a particular turn of phrase would bring it home to him once again that in a few months at most he was almost certainly going to be trying to kill a person, that he was planning to stick his sword right through someone. Yes, the Wizard Lord was a special case, being a wizard and a mass murderer, but he was still a human being.

"I have never heard the Thief's voice," the Speaker said. "I cannot judge her worth."

   "I haven't talked to Stealth in, oh, fourteen or fifteen years," the Seer said. "That would have been just before you were Chosen, Babble. She doesn't travel much."

   "Is she along our route?" Breaker asked. "We don't know where Boss is going," the Seer said. "How can we tell?"

"Well, if we head directly for Winterhome, how far out of our way would the Thief's home be?"

"Not far," the Seer said. "Not far at all."

"Then why not? We'll probably want her to join us eventually."

"Sword has a point," the Archer said. "Then we'll go there next," the Seer agreed. She accepted a towel and began drying her hair as she got to her feet. "Agreed."