[29]

 Although the discussion of possible threats and methods of magical attack stretched on through much of the afternoon, at first Breaker did not dare voice his own greatest concern. This was a possibility that had occurred to him as he watched the squirrels he chased from the driver's bench scurry along the wagon's tongue.

He hoped that the Wizard Lord had not thought of it, and for that reason he did not mention it; while the Seer apparently always knew when the Wizard Lord was watching or listening, Breaker was not convinced the Wizard Lord might not have other ways to spy on them beyond direct observation. He did not intend to say anything about his worries lest the Wizard Lord overhear and decide to try out Breaker's idea.

   If he could think of an effective way to counter it, then mentioning it to the others would make sense, but until he did he preferred to keep quiet.

Of course, he could ask questions that might lead to devising a defense. He mulled that over for a time, and when he had watched the largely recovered Archer return to the driver's seat and the drenched and shivering Scholar clamber back into the wagon, he finally spoke up.

   "The Wizard Lord can possess any animal, can he not?" he asked.

   "So long as he has the eight talismans, yes," the Seer replied, as she wrapped a dry cloak around the Scholar.

   "And is there any way to reverse this possession, to free the beast from his control?"

   The others exchanged glances.

   "If you speak the beast's true name and order it to be free, you can counter the Wizard Lord's influence," the Speaker said. "I attempted to do as much with the squirrels. But you must speak the name clearly and fully, and be heard by the creature's ler. And it may be necessary to repeat this several times; it depends on how much of his own power the Wizard Lord has put into the enchantment."

   Breaker hesitated, but decided this was the counter he had wanted. He said, "I think it might be wise, then, if all of us knew and could say the true names of our oxen. We can't afford to kill them, should they turn on us or lead us astray."

"The oxen?" The Leader glanced at the wagon's door. "A very good point, Sword. Very clever. Babble, could you help us out with this?"

"Of course." She muttered something incomprehensible, then went to the opening. "I'll be right back."

Breaker watched as she clambered out onto the bench beside the Archer, her hood pulled forward to protect her from the rain; then he turned his attention back to the Leader.

   "I don't understand why he's giving us this chance to rest and recover," Breaker said. "Look at the Archer—he was down, but after the squirrels the Wizard Lord made no attempt to finish him off, and now he's back in the driver's seat. Why hasn't the Wizard Lord sent more animals after us, or used his lightning to knock down more trees?"

   "He's only human," the Scholar said, shivering. "Surely he needs to rest, too."

   "But he has his magic," the Seer replied. "He has superhuman strength and endurance—Sword's paired talisman provides that. And using magic isn't as taxing as lifting and hauling. No, I think he's giving us time to think; he still wants us to turn back, he doesn't want to kill us."

"Perhaps the ler are displeased with him, and it's they who are demanding a rest," the Leader suggested. "The Speaker said that the spirits of the animals resented what he did."

"But that's in the nature of his wizardry," the Scholar said. "His talismans let him command ler, not merely negotiate with them, or make requests, as priests and lesser wizards might. His talismanic ler are bound to him, as ours are bound to us."

   "Give someone too many commands and he may rebel," the Leader said, "no matter what oaths he might have given. And isn't it so that the ler of the individual animals are not bound by talismans, but by their true names? He uses the talismans to learn those names, but it's the names that give him power over the beasts, and perhaps they're resisting that power."

   "Or perhaps he can only learn and use so many true names at a time," Breaker suggested. "Magic does have limits, doesn't it? Mine certainly does."

   "And the lightning?" the Seer asked. "That's not done with names." "Perhaps those ler have reached their limit," the Leader said. "After all, while I don't know what lightning really is, it's natural, it comes from the sky—perhaps whatever reservoir it draws upon has run dry for the present, and needs to be . . ."

   "He's listening," the Seer interrupted. She turned. "A spider, I think, somewhere in that corner."

   "If it's a spider, then he's just spying on us," the Leader said, addressing the indicated corner. "I had wondered whether he might want to talk—whether perhaps he's come to his senses and is ready to resign."

   "Somehow, I doubt it," Breaker said.

   "You were just asking why he's paused in his assault," the Leader retorted. "Perhaps that's why."

"He released the spider, if that's what it was," the Seer said. "But I think he's . . . he's not entirely gone,
somehow."
Her final word was partially obscured by the Speaker's scream.

Breaker and the Leader dove for the door simultaneously, and almost collided there; at the last instant Breaker caught himself, and the Leader plunged through first, out into the pounding rain—which abruptly stopped. The wagon, too, abruptly stopped, just as Breaker thrust his head through the door, and he almost toppled forward onto the Leader's back.

The Speaker was standing in the mud beside the left lead ox, clutching the reins and looking the beast in the eye; the other oxen appeared confused, and were moving uneasily in their harnesses.

   And the ox spoke, its voice a distorted bellow that was clearly audible, now that the rain's drumming had faded to the faint patter of water dripping from the trees and metal cage. The inhuman tone made the words hard to understand at first, but never quite unintelligible.

   "/ am not about to surrender!" it said. "I was allowing you time to come to your senses. Can't you see how much damage your attempts to destroy me will cause? You can still go home peacefully. We can all go on as before. I've shown you I can hurt you, despite your protections—and rest assured, I will kill you if I must."

   "And for each of us you kill your power will be lessened, and the rest will be more determined to slay you," the Leader said.

   "But we are a long way from that, as yet," the ox replied. "I have only begun to demonstrate how much I can make you suffer without killing you. You mourned that guide I slew, and you barely knew her—what, then, when I destroy your homes with lightning and fire? What will you feel when I kill the Thief and her children, or the Beauty's adopted clan sisters, or the Swordsman's family, off in the northern valleys?"

   Breaker felt a sudden chill.

   "You wouldn't dare," the Leader said.

"Wouldn't I? What about your useless brother, Boss? Do you want to see his daughter orphaned? His true name is Faral imz Dorra shadas Bik . . ."

"We know you can find names," the Leader interrupted. "And yes, I'm sure you found Faral and Wirra, and you could kill them—and do you think that would make me stop? Then I'd have a personal vengeance to pursue, as well as my duty!" . "And you'd have Wirra's death on your conscience—your own niece."

   "You don't seem to be troubled by the slaughter of all your friends and family," the Leader retorted. "I think I could live with it, if I avenged them with your death. Why not resign now, and save us all the grief?"

   "Arima first, in your family," the ox said, twisting its head in Breaker's direction.

   "Arima?" Breaker said, blinking.

"Your older sister, the musician—her true name begins Arima sama Tisna."

"It does? You mean Harp?"
"You Northerners—you don't know your own family's names!" The ox shook its head. "Strange, strange people."

"You killed your own people, and you call me strange?" Breaker marveled.

"And after her, your other sisters, one by one, and then your father, and your mother, and your friends, those loutish barley-farmers—I can kill them all, one by one, until you give up this mad idea of defeating me."

Breaker stared at the ox, unable to frame a reply.

   Did the Wizard Lord really mean what he said? Would he kill Harp and Fidget and Spider, and their mother and father, if Breaker kept going?

   But it was his duty to go on, to destroy the Wizard Lord, precisely so that the mad Dark Lord would not kill more innocents. It was the role he had accepted when he became the Swordsman.

He had been warned that it would change his entire life, set him apart from everything he had known, but he had never thought it would mean his family, maybe all of Mad Oak, would be held hostage, perhaps killed.

The memory of the blasted wasteland that had been Stoneslope rose up before him, and superimposed itself upon his memories of Mad Oak, and he found himself imagining the desolation—the pavilion burned down to stone and ash, the houses roofless and empty, the square strewn with his friends' bones, Harp's harp broken apart in the wreckage, the strings snapped and curled.

That could happen—it wasn't an empty threat or some story from centuries ago, it could actually happen.

The old stories spoke of how some of the Dark Lords had laid waste to their enemies, in particular the Dark Lord of Kamith t'Daru, but Breaker had never really thought about what that meant, what the survivors would have seen and felt. He felt physically ill, his stomach cramping—but he was not going to give in.

   Because if he once yielded, where would it stop? The Wizard Lord could kill anyone who displeased him, and then threaten to kill more if Breaker and the others retaliated, and where would it stop? It could only end in the Wizard Lord's death, and the only question was how soon that end would come.

   Breaker had agreed to be a hero, and now the time had come to mean it, to be a hero, despite what it would cost him. He couldn't surrender, couldn't give in to the Wizard Lord's threats, even if it meant his own family would die.

He thought he was going to throw up.

   He had thought of heroism in the form of flashing swords and braving magical assaults, not of letting his unsuspecting sisters be murdered.

   "Give it up," the ox said. "Go home."

   "I can't," Breaker whispered. "You know I can't."

"You're only making it worse," the Leader said. "You surrender, resign, go home—no one more needs to die."

"Go home?" the ox lowed. "To where? To what?"

Breaker's memory of Stoneslope reemerged, and he shuddered.

"I am the Wizard Lord," the ox said. "I will always be the Wizard Lord; I will never return to anything less."

"Then you'll die," the Leader said. "Is that really better?"

   "We all die, sooner or later," the ox replied. "Even the name of the Council of Immortals, like everything else they say, is a lie. We all die—but the question is when, and rest assured, if you continue your quest you will die before I do, and your families and friends with you."

   "Do you have anything more to say, or are you just going to keep repeating this?" the Leader demanded.

   "I have told you what must happen," the ox replied. "It is on your heads if you continue to deny my rightful authority as the Wizard Lord to slay those who defy me."

   "Speaker, free that poor beast," the Leader said. The Speaker nodded, then cleared her throat and made a low, sweet sound. The ox trembled, stamped, shook its head—then lowed wordlessly.

   "It's done," the Speaker said.

   "Good," Breaker said, with a shudder. He did not like talking to the Wizard Lord; it never seemed to lead anywhere, and the constant threats and warnings made him uneasy—but most of all, such conversations reminded him that he was trying to kill someone, that he was expected to thrust a steel blade through that man's heart.

   "The Wizard Lord" was an abstraction; killing the Wizard Lord didn't seem so very dreadful in the abstract. But when the Wizard Lord acquired a voice, even a borrowed one, and spoke to Breaker, that made it all more tangible, and uncomfortably so. That voice belonged to a person, one with a heart and mind of his own—albeit a sick, dark heart and a twisted mind. Breaker knew the Wizard Lord had killed dozens of innocent people, but except for the one guide he had known only briefly, none of those people seemed entirely real. They were dead, though not entirely gone, and Breaker had never met them, never spoken with them, while they lived. The pale suffering ghosts they had left behind were not people, but merely echoes and shadows.

   But Harp, and Fidget, and Spider . . .

   "Drive on," the Leader told the Archer, and with a command and a snap of the reins the Archer set the oxen in motion and the wagon rolling.

Breaker, the Leader, and the Speaker scrambled back inside as the rain began anew, and for the next half-hour or so, after the Beauty, the Scholar, and the Seer had been informed what the ox had said, the party concentrated on learning from the Speaker the true names of the oxen. Their pronunciation did not come naturally to human throats.

   Only after conversation had ceased, bringing what might have been called a companionable silence had it not been for the creaking of wheels and the constant roar of the rain, did the Beauty stir and ask, "Is anyone considering it?"

   Breaker glanced at her scarf-wrapped face and those deep, lovely eyes, gleaming warmly in the golden lanternlight.

"No, of course not," the Leader replied. "Considering what?" the Scholar asked. "Turning back," the Beauty said. "Letting the Wizard Lord be." "Oh."

There was a moment of embarrassed quasi-silence; then the Scholar coughed, breaking the tension. "This dampness is getting to me," he muttered. "When will we reach the Thief's house, Seer?" the Leader asked, and the conversation turned to distances and routes and speeds—but Breaker found himself watching the Beauty, and saw that her eyes, all he could see of her, were troubled.