The Ninth Talisman (22 page)

In the morning, though, he discovered that the roads had brought exotic
goods here, just as they had to Winterhome. Oh, the selection was far less impressive in this smaller community, but it was still a bit shocking to Sword. He browsed a little, then made the expected obeisance at the town's temple and continued on his way north.

By the time he reached Broadpool the shock had worn off.
Every
village now seemed to have merchants peddling their wares from carts and wagons, selling things as mundane as raisins and as exotic as silk brocade, or as strange as sea creatures resembling nothing Sword had ever seen before, pickled in spiced vinegar. He could not imagine what the creatures were intended for; it wasn't until he heard the vendor explaining how to cook them that he realized they were food.

After Broadpool he continued on, through Rock Bridge and Willow bank, until he finally arrived home in Mad Oak, only to find that even in his hometown traders were exchanging spices and seashells for beer and barley.

And everywhere, the buyers expressed their admiration for the Wizard Lord who had made this possible. Everywhere, Sword was greeted with comments, ranging from lighthearted jests to dead-serious admonitions, to the effect that he had better not kill
this
one as he had the last. A few priests still grumbled about headaches and indigestion, and bemoaned the confusion and dismay of the
ler,
and some women chattered about nightmares even as they looked through the merchants' wares, but everyone else was openly delighted by the new roads and the commerce and freedom they brought.

Sword noticed that the roads had already become more welcoming; the dizziness and disorientation he had felt when he first headed south were almost entirely gone. The
ler
had settled into their new arrangements, aided by the passage of dozens of travelers.

Sword watched and listened and took it all in, and when he sat in his mother's house, watching her run a few yards of fine velvet through her fingers and rave about the fabric's beauty, he reached a conclusion.

Even if the Council of Immortals were to come to him and tell him that Artil had violated the rules, even if the Wizard Lord were arbitrarily killing an occasional troublemaker in his campaign to reshape Barokan, even if the new Leader, whoever she was, wanted Artil dead, Sword had no intention of killing him. The man was indeed replacing
the old ways with something better, something more popular, something that made life better for everyone.

Oh, there were things the Wizard Lord might do that would go too far—if he exterminated an entire village as the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills had, for example—but it would take something very drastic indeed to overcome the obvious benefits he had bestowed on Barokan.

And that meant that Sword's role as the Chosen Swordsman was not needed.

Unless something utterly unexpected happened, unless Artil died or went mad, Sword expected to spend the rest of his days as a farmer here in Mad Oak, raising barley and beans.

He smiled at the thought, but it was an unsteady smile that quickly faded.

The wind coming over the ridge from the west was cold and damp, and pulled the leaves from the trees into sodden brown heaps. Autumn was well advanced, and as Sword sat in the pavilion looking out at the raw weather and the mostly bare trees he thought that he would not be at all surprised to see the first snow almost any day now—though not today; it was still too warm.

The moisture in the air, and the heavy clouds building up overhead, made it obvious that it was going to rain soon. Sword assumed the rain would not fall until after dark; after all, the Wizard Lord controlled the weather, when he wasn't up in his cliff-top retreat, and it had been the custom for centuries to allow rain only at night.

That custom had suffered somewhat during the summer; Artil might have instructed the weather
ler
to behave themselves, but they had not entirely obeyed. The summer had been unusually hot, and three or four times rain had fallen in daylight. Some people had found that upsetting; Sword had discovered, to his surprise, that he rather liked it, despite unfortunate past experiences with unnatural rain. The summer rains had been gentle and cooling, nothing like the ferocious, punishing downpours that the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills had unleashed in his attempts to deter the Chosen.

But then reports arrived that the Wizard Lord had descended the cliff and settled back into Winterhome, and the weather had begun behaving itself again.

At least, until now. Going by the long streaks of shadow and light the sun was still above the ridge, but those clouds were awfully dark and threatening, the air heavy with moisture. As Sword looked up at the sky through the open shutters, a low rumble sounded.

He blinked.

“That's
not right!” he said, to no one in particular. He rose from his chair.

The rumble sounded again, louder and closer. There could be no mistaking it.

“That's thunder!” Sword exclaimed.

Around him the half-dozen other occupants of the pavilion were stirring nervously.

“It's what?” Brokenose asked, stepping up beside Sword.

“Thunder! The sound a lightning bolt makes!”

Brokenose stared wildly past the shutters, eyes darting back and forth. “I don't see any lightning,” he said worriedly.

“Are you sure, Sword?” Little Weaver asked from her chair ten feet away.

“Yes, I'm sure,” Sword said. “I heard it a hundred times when we were on our way to the Dark Lord's tower. Sometimes the lightning is hidden up in the clouds, where you can't see it.”

“But the Wizard Lord
protects
us from lightning!” Potter wailed. Sword glanced at her, remembering when she had been a skinny girl known as Mudpie; she had certainly grown up over the last few years, but that unhappy wail was little Mudpie's voice.

“He's supposed to, certainly,” Sword replied.

“There hasn't been a thunderstorm in Mad Oak in hundreds of years!”

“I know.” Sword squinted up at the clouds. “He has to have brought this one here deliberately. I wonder why?”

“Go ask him!” Potter called.

Several people laughed at that. Sword replied gently, “I can't get all the way to Winterhome before this storm breaks, Potter.”

“Well, how do you know he's
in
Winterhome? Maybe he's here, bringing the storm with him!”

That actually had some sense to it, and Sword shrugged. “Let me go up on the ridge and take a look around,” he said. “After all, I'm the one person here that lightning can't strike. If the Wizard Lord
is
here, maybe he'll talk to me and explain what's going on.”

There was a general chorus of agreement, and Sword turned toward the south door, the one that opened on the trail up to the ridgetop. He
had half-expected some of the others to follow him, but they did not; they stayed where they were, seated or standing, and watched him go.

He wondered, as he walked, what the Wizard Lord was up to. Sword had thought, after seeing the changes that the roads had brought to every town from Mad Oak to Winterhome, that Artil had been sincere in his desire to do nothing but improve life for the people of Barokan, but there could be no question that this storm had the Wizard Lord's consent, even if it were not actually of his making.

How could a thunderstorm benefit anyone?

Sword could not think of anything good that lightning might do. If this really was a deliberate thunderstorm, and not a miscalculation of some kind, it seemed depressingly possible that Artil had gone mad, like his predecessor, or perhaps given in to the evil counsel of that traitor Farash inith Kerra.

Sword pulled open the pavilion door and stepped out into the wind, which snatched at his jacket and whipped his hair across his face, roaring in his ears. He blinked, brushed the hair away with one hand while the other clutched at his jacket, then took a few steps and looked up.

The clouds were black and ominous, hanging low over the ridge—but they were not all that large; he could see clear sky in the distance to the north and west, and the setting sun shone orange beneath the over-cast, bathing the whole scene in eerie light.

And he could also see, hanging motionless beneath the clouds, a human figure, so high above him that he could see almost no details, could not determine its sex or age, let alone identity. It held a staff, and wore a long red cloak that flapped wildly about it, catching the orange sunset.

That, Sword thought, was almost certainly the Wizard Lord. He was flying there, supported by
ler
of air and wind, and presumably guiding the storm—but why? He wasn't directly over the town or pavilion, but a little to the southwest, directly above the ridge, just outside the borders.

Sword's gaze fell from the wizard to the ground beneath him, and the immense old tree that stood there, and another piece of the mystery fell into place. The Wizard Lord was hovering directly over the great Mad Oak that gave the town its name, the horrific tree that had created a small zone of death beneath its branches.

Whatever Artil was doing up there, it was directed at the tree, not the town.

And then the lightning bolt flashed from sky to earth, blinding Sword for a moment; the crack of thunder deafened him, and the wind seemed to snap at him like a maddened animal for an instant.

Another smaller, sharper crack sounded, as his ears and eyes cleared, then a crackling, and he saw a limb tear loose from the Mad Oak's upper branches and smash its way down through the branches below.

Lightning flashed again, and again thunder rolled over Sword as a second blue-white bolt struck the tree. This time Sword saw flames appear in the oak's crown. The tree, after the fashion of oaks, still had most of its leaves even this late in the season, though all were dry and yellow or orange-brown; ordinarily they would have fallen a few at a time until well into the winter, before the branches were completely bare.

Now, though, the remaining leaves were blazing with more than just autumn color. Fire spread from leaf to leaf, branch to branch.

The Wizard Lord hung in the sky above the burning tree, watching.

Sword stood at the pavilion door, watching.

The wind abruptly died, dropping from a gale to a gentle breeze in seconds, and the world suddenly turned quiet. The howling of wind through the trees and around the eaves of the pavilion, and the rustling of leaves, simply vanished. As Sword's ears adjusted to the relative silence, he could hear the crackling of distant flame as the Mad Oak burned. The fire had spread through the entire tree now, turning it into a gigantic, misshapen torch that sent a column of smoke spiraling upward.

And above the smoke the clouds were parting, thinning, scattering; the storm had served its purpose, and now the Wizard Lord was dispersing it. No rain had fallen, and Sword was sure that none would until the oak had entirely burned. There had been no flicker of lightning, nor the slightest rumble of thunder, since the tree began to burn. Those two great bolts had been the storm's entire purpose.

“Sword, what's happening?” a woman's voice called from somewhere behind him, and for the first time Sword realized that he had left the door open. He turned.

Several faces were gathered in the doorway, looking out at him.

“The Wizard Lord blasted the Mad Oak,” he said. “That's what the storm was for.” He pointed, then began walking up the ridge.

“What?” Three or four people pushed their way out of the crowd and followed Sword up toward the ridgetop, to where they, too, could see the burning tree.

The little group stood, silently watching, as the flames ate away the last lingering leaves, sending a black mist of ash coiling upward. The branches were now solidly ablaze as well, the great twisted trunk blackened and starting to scorch.

The Wizard Lord had moved aside, to avoid the smoke, and now he seemed to notice his little audience. He turned and swooped downward toward them like some great red bird.

Sword stood calmly waiting, but the others backed away. Potter turned and ran, but Brokenose, Little Weaver, and Coldfoot stood their ground just a few feet behind the Swordsman.

The flying figure came nearer and nearer, and Sword could see that it was indeed Artil, with his embroidered red robes and black hair flapping, the familiar cord of talismans around his throat, his staff in his hand.

He had not carried staff or talismans when Sword had last seen him, up at the Summer Palace, but here he was working magic, so of course he had them.

“Hello, good people!” the airborne figure called.

“Hello, Artil,” Sword called back.

“Sword! What a pleasure!” The Wizard Lord waved a greeting. “I knew you lived in Mad Oak, of course, but I hadn't thought I would be fortunate enough to see you here tonight.” His descent halted a foot or two above the ground, perhaps six feet away from Sword. Sword could not believe that Mad Oak's
ler
would still refuse him admission, now that he was the Wizard Lord, but perhaps he simply didn't care to press the issue.