[31]

 

 It took perhaps twenty minutes' work to extinguish the last traces of the fire, and by then Merrilin and the Beauty had set Kilila's broken arm and put her to bed— fortunately, her bed was in a corner of the loft well clear of the fire. Garant was now sleeping in his mother's arms as she sat, rocking and cooing, by the loft rail near her daughter's bed.

Sezen had joined Breaker and Boss in cutting burning thatch from overhead and stamping it to ash or kicking it into the flooded room below; the three men's eyes were watering from the smoke, and all were coughing sporadically, but the fire was out.

Amazingly, no rain had yet penetrated the burned area. "It's not really so surprising," the Leader said, when Breaker commented on it. "After all, if water could get in, then the thatch wouldn't have been dry enough to burn." "It's a good, thick roof," Sezen said. "I wanted it to last." "Well, it's not as thick as it was," Breaker pointed out. "And I doubt it'll smell very pleasant. You'll want to repair that when the weather improves."

"Is the weather ever going to improve?" Sezen asked. "If the Wizard Lord has truly gone mad, then how do we know he won't keep it raining until all Barokan is underwater?"

"I don't think he can do that," Breaker said mildly.

"For one thing, we'll kill him soon," the Leader said. 'The eight of us."

Merrilin looked up from her children at that. "Seven," she said.

The three men turned.

   "I'm not going," she said. "After this? I can't leave my children after this! Kilila needs me—I can't go anywhere until her arm heals."

"But. . . " Sezen began.
"I want him dead," she said. "Oh, believe me, after this I really want him dead! And if you seven can't do it, then
maybe I will. But my children come first."

   "But. . . " "Sezen, if I go with them, the Wizard Lord will send more lightning. He might kill you all, and burn down the house—but if I'm here he won't dare. He knows that I'd come after him, and. . . well, he doesn't know what I can do, but / know. I did some experimenting, back when I was young, and the magic is still there. Maybe I don't have a magic weapon like the Swordsman, or a seductive voice like the Beauty, but I have my own ways. If the Wizard Lord defeats the others, he still won't be safe; he'll pay for this, for breaking my daughter's arm, one way or another. But right now, my family comes first, and I'm staying right here."

"And we have a reserve," the Leader said. "The seven of us will remove this monster from power—but if the ler betray us and we somehow fail, we have a second team." He bowed. "Thank you, Merrilin tarak Dolin." And that settled it.

The party stayed the night at the house; the women slept in the loft with the family, while the Leader, the Archer, the Swordsman, and the Scholar slept in the wagon. Room was found in an outbuilding for the oxen.

   Breaker noticed that the Beauty carefully slept as far away from Sezen as possible, in an unlit corner. And as had happened at the inn in Winterhome, Breaker heard voices in the night while half-awake, but they stopped when he tried to listen. He wondered, in his sleep-muddled state, whether Sezen or the Archer was troubling the Beauty, or whether one of the children had been talking while asleep, but he dozed off again before he could think of anything to do about it. The rain had ended even before the fire was out, and there was no more lightning, but during the night the water in the house rose to a depth of three or four inches, and in the surrounding gardens to half a foot, before finally draining away. In the morning, as final preparations for departure were made, mere puddles remained, and the flowers, much the worse for wear, had emerged again.

The seven Chosen took their leave at midmorning, after the Swordsman, Archer, and Thief had practiced their skills, and they set out west and south—at least, once the wagon had been pried out of the mud.

The rain held off until surprisingly late; it was not until they were crossing the first low ridge and almost out of sight of the lightning-struck house that the first drops fell.

   "I think he slept late," the Seer said. "He tired himself out yesterday." "Or it may be that the rain ler themselves are getting weary of this," the Scholar suggested. "Is that possible?" Breaker asked. "Why not?"

   "Well, I. . . I never really thought of ler as wearying of anything they do. I mean, year after year, the barley grows just as it always has, and the river flows over the same stones. . . "

   "But it changes from one day to the next as the grain ripens—and not all ler are the same, as you certainly should have noticed! What are our souls, but the ler of ourselves, and surely we grow weary of things?"

   "I. . . " Breaker stopped. Obviously, some ler could grow tired or bored—why not the ones the Wizard Lord used to bring the rain? After all, it never rained as much naturally as it had during these last few days.

   Indeed, that day's downpour seemed a halfhearted effort compared with what they had seen before. The countryside did not lend itself to using lightning-blasted trees as roadblocks, though they did see some distant flashes and hear a rumble or two, and as a result they made decent time to Quince Market.

   And in Quince Market, rather than the quiet village and dismal rain they had anticipated, they found smoldering ruins and excited natives. They saw the smoke from an hour away, even through the haze of rain, and knew something was wrong, but it was not until they passed the boundary shrine and found themselves surrounded by townspeople that they had any clear idea just what had happened.

   "You are the Chosen, aren't you?" a man demanded before the wagon's rear wheels cleared the shrine. "Yes, we are," replied the Leader from the driver's bench. "What's happened here?"

"It's the Wizard Lord!" someone called from farther back. "He threatened to kill us all if we helped you!"

   "He's gone mad," a woman added. "You have to kill him."

   "He called fire from the sky!"

   "He spoke through Doublethumb's dog!"

"How severe is the damage?" the Leader asked. "Has anyone been seriously hurt?"

"Four houses are burned!"

"And a stable!" ,

"Little Emerald has broken ribs!" "My cat's missing!"

"Calm, people, calm!" the Leader called, rising to his feet and spreading his hands. "I know a Dark Lord is a terrible thing, and one we thought we'd never live to see, but it's nothing we can't handle. We are on our way to the Galbek Hills to deal with him, and this is just a desperate attempt to discourage us. I'm very sorry for Emerald, and about this woman's cat, and of course for the four families who lost their homes, but if that's the worst of it you've been fortunate—your ler are looking out for you."

"What are you going to do about it?"

   "We are going to the Galbek Hills to remove the Wizard Lord, by whatever means may be necessary. What else can we do?"

   "What about my home?"

   "You'll rebuild, of course, and I'm sure your neighbors and priests will help you. But right now, we have a long journey ahead of us, and we need lodging . . . "

The crowd suddenly fell silent.

"You can't stay here," a big man said.

"He'd kill us all."

A murmur of agreement ran through the gathered townsfolk.

   Breaker peered out between the Leader and the Archer, and saw that the crowd, which up until then had been merely angry and upset, had now turned hostile.

   "Ah," the Leader said. He glanced back into the wagon, as if asking if anyone had any useful suggestions, then turned his attention back to the crowd. "I see, and you have a good point. Then we will reprovision and move on . . . "

   "We can't feed you," someone said. "He'd kill us."

   "Ah," the Leader said again. He sighed. "Very well, then—we will be on our way, and rest assured, we will do our best to remove this nightmare from Barokan and restore peace and order. Bow, steer us around the village, please."

   "But, Boss, you could persuade them . . . "

   "I could, but I won't."

   "But. . . "

   "Do it."

The Archer shrugged. "You're the Leader," he said. He turned the wagon aside.

   A halfhearted cheer went up. "Hail the Chosen!"

   "Save us from the Dark Lord!"

   "Go away!"

"Go quickly!"

"May the ler protect you!"

They bypassed Quince Market, and the next town, and the next, sleeping in the wagon by the roadside—a sleep troubled by unpleasant dreams. Breaker could remember no details of what he had dreamed when he woke, but he often awoke sweating, his hands clenched so tight they ached, and he always knew that whatever he had dreamed had been bad. When they met a guide upon the road, some four days past Quince Market, Breaker spent all his remaining funds buying ara feathers from him, in hopes the magic-blocking feathers would shield him from the nightmares.

   They helped, but not as much as Breaker had hoped. Obtaining water for drinking and bathing along the way was no problem, even without entering any inns or villages—the rain-swollen streams and overflowing wells and cisterns everywhere provided them with all the water they could want. Food was not so plentiful, however; their supplies ran out on the fifth day. They resorted to looting farms along the way, stealing grain and produce from outlying barns, and the Archer took to carrying his bow strung and ready, to bring down game for the cookpot. Rabbits, birds, squirrels, and a deer provided variety in their diet; they did not take down any livestock, preferring to keep their thievery to a minimum.

The Scholar turned out to be a reasonably competent butcher. "I had it all explained to me once," he said. "I couldn't forget it if I tried. But I've had very little practical experience until now."

The rain continued, but with ever less enthusiasm. Lightning seemed to be reserved for threatening any town they approached, and there were no more roadblocks. Animals attacked them occasionally, but now that the Seer and the Speaker knew to watch for those,- they were easily dealt with—either the Speaker would use the beast's true name to release it from the spell, or the Archer or the Swordsman would dispose of it more permanently, often providing dinner in the process. The Wizard Lord could not mass enough animals in a single assault to overwhelm them all.

And these attacks, too, trailed off after a time. Even the nightmares, already weakened by the ara feathers, faded away to nothing.

"I think he's wearing himself out," the Seer said, when Breaker commented on the ineffectuality of the Wizard Lord's continuing efforts. "He feels tired, somehow. I could sense it in my meditation."

   "I thought you just knew where he was, and whether he's killed anyone," Breaker said.

   "That's all I can be sure of," the Seer agreed, "but sometimes I get these feelings about him, a little extra." Breaker nodded.

They forged onward, passing town after town, entering none. A few showed evidence that their citizens had defied the Wizard Lord—burned houses and shops, thatch torn from roofs by storm winds, and so on—but most were unscathed, and the Seer reported mercifully few deaths.

   Few.

   Not none.

   In all, the Wizard Lord killed five more people along the route to assert his insistence that no one aid the Chosen.

   And no one did. The Chosen did not ask them to risk themselves. After all, it was the role of the Chosen, and only the Chosen, to defeat the Wizard Lord.

   All the same, Breaker thought this hardly seemed like the heroic adventure the Chosen Swordsman ought to be having on his way to slay a Dark Lord. As the Swordsman he was supposed to fight other men, not struggle through rain and snow and mud, help push an overweight, metal-caged wagon out of ruts and mudholes and ice, or butcher possessed animals that attacked them—and not dragons or hippogriffs or even animals as exotic as ara, but just dogs and deer and the like, and once an immense bull.

   He would have much preferred to be back in Mad Oak, growing barley and beans.

   Still, he reassured himself that he was carrying out his role, he was performing his duties, he was doing the right thing. The dead of Stoneslope had to be avenged, and all

Barokan defended from this mad wizard, no matter how tedious and unpleasant the job might be.

   One meager comfort was that the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills never made good on his threat to kill their friends and family—the Seer was able to reassure them on that count. It was theoretically possible that the Wizard Lord had sent others to commit such murders, but he never claimed to have done so, and such an action would have made no sense, so Breaker slept each night in reasonable assurance that his sisters and parents were unharmed.

 

 

 

WINTER HAD COME, and the constant rain turned to snow and ice, before they finally came in sight of the Wizard Lord's keep, perched on the highest peak in the Galbek Hills. They still had a good two or three miles to go when the stone tower's outline became unmistakable through lingering fog mixed with snow, and they paused for a moment to look at it—and for the Archer to take a look around for the evening meal.

It had been a tradition for centuries that each Wizard Lord used his magic to erect his home and headquarters, to demonstrate that he had indeed mastered enough ler to justify his title as Wizard Lord, and usually much of his power was tied to this place, as if he were a priest—that was one reason that the Chosen generally fought Dark Lords in their strongholds, rather than chasing them across the countryside. In his journey to meet the Seer and Scholar in Tumbled Sheep, Breaker had glimpsed from afar the remains of one such Wizard Lord's abandoned keep in the southern hills, and he knew the remnants of others had been incorporated into the surrounding communities—the onetime stronghold of the Dark Lord of the Midlands was now the central temple of the town of Drumhead, for example.

This tower, however, was clearly destined to be a ruin, not a temple—there was no surrounding community, the town of Split Reed was more than half a mile away and out of sight to the south, and Breaker doubted anyone would want the thing. It was crude and ugly, just a column of raw stone pierced by a few scattered windows; there was no ornamentation, no attempt at grace or elegant design. Even the snow could not soften its appearance into any semblance of beauty.

   Breaker, the Beauty, and the Seer climbed a low, snow-covered hill for a better view while the Archer went in search of game and the Scholar, the Leader, and the Speaker stayed in the wagon. At the top they stared silently for a moment before anyone spoke.

"He lives in that?" the Beauty finally said. "By choice?"

"If I had any doubt that he was mad, the sight of that thing would dispel it," Breaker replied.

"I can't do it," the Seer said.

Breaker blinked. He turned to look at her. "Do what?" he asked.

"I can't go in there," she said. "I can't help you kill him."

"Why not?"

"I just. . . I just can't."

"Why?"

"I'm scared, all right? I can't do it!"

"But it was your idea! You were the one who knew he'd killed everyone in Stoneslope!"

   "I know. He has to die, and it's my fault he didn't die five years ago, when the Swordsman was a wily old man instead of an untested youth, but I was afraid then, afraid to believe he had really become a Dark Lord, and I'm afraid now, and I can't go in there! The rest of you will have to do it without me."

   "But how will we find him?"

   "It's not very big. And he's always in there—he almost never leaves it at all, does everything with his magic. He has a room at the top, and then his workshop and sleeping quarters underground, and the rest is almost empty, he never spends much time there. You can find him without me. I'm not going in there."

Breaker stared helplessly at her, then turned back toward the wagon and called, "Boss! Could you come here, please?"
The Leader turned and waved an acknowledgment.

"You came this far," the Beauty said. "Why are you only losing your nerve now?"

"Look at that thing!" the Seer said. "I can't go in there."

   "You've been in dead guesthouses, and temple cells, and the ruins of Stoneslope—why is that any worse?" Breaker demanded.

   "Just look at it! It's a Dark Lord's keep, by all the ler! It even looks like one—I can't believe no one ever realized before, just from looking at it, that there's something wrong with this man."

   "Who would notice?" the Leader asked, as he trudged up the hill to join them. "People mind their own business, they have their own jobs to do and roles to fill, and making sure the Wizard Lord hasn't gone mad is our job, nobody else's."

   "The Seer is saying it's not her job after all," Breaker replied.

   "She's frightened," the Beauty agreed. "She doesn't want to go any farther."

   "Well, she doesn't need to," the Leader said. "She got us here, and that's her job—from now on it's up to the rest of us to do ours. What's a middle-aged woman going to do in our fight against a wizard? It's up to you, me, and Bow, Sword. The rest are just here to help us out—no one expects Lore or Beauty to do any fighting, and Babble's job is going to be countering spells, not attacking anyone. If the Seer's too frightened to continue, why force her? She'd be more hindrance than help."

"You're sure?" Breaker asked. "We already lost the Thief. . . "
"I'm sure," the Leader said. "She can stay with the wagon while the rest of us go inside—would that suit you, Seer?"
"That would be . . . yes. That would do," she said. "Or you could take shelter in Split Reed . . . " "No. The wagon
is fine."

"Then that's how it'll be. You don't have to go inside."

"Thank you, Boss," the Seer said. "Thank you."

Breaker stared at them for a moment, but could not think of anything useful to say. The Leader surely knew what he was doing—after all, he was the Leader, with a magical gift for planning and persuading. If he said the Seer would be no more use, then surely she wouldn't be.

But somehow something felt wrong, all the same, and Breaker was troubled as he marched back down to the wagon. The Chosen were supposed to be a team, working together, each in his assigned role, but the Thief who would get them past locks and guards was not here, and now the Seer who was to tell them where their enemy could be found was refusing her role, as well. And the Leader who was supposed to ensure that everyone did his part was doing nothing to prevent this new defection.

 

It wasn't right—but he was the Swordsman, not the Leader, and could only play out his own role and hope that it would be enough.