The Ninth Talisman (32 page)

“No. Old Boss never let any of us see his magic in action at all. Remember, he was keeping secrets from us. He acted just enough like a leader that we never really questioned him, but he never did anything that would actually help us.”

“There was more going on than just what he'd done to Doublefall, wasn't there?”

“Yes.” He looked at the door; there was no sign of the sergeant's return. “He was working with the Dark Lord all along. He thought that together they could do to all of Barokan what he'd done to Doublefall.”

“And you let him live.”

Sword had no reply to that.

A moment later the sergeant reappeared, accompanied by a soldier whose red tunic bore a gold stripe on the shoulders. This new arrival held out a hand in greeting. “I'm captain of the Third Expedition,” he said. “I understand the Wizard Lord sent you with some questions about our work?”

Sword shot Boss a quick look, but she paid him no attention as she said, “Yes, Captain. Is there somewhere we could speak privately, and let the sergeant get back to his work?”

Half an hour later Sword and Boss were sitting comfortably in the captain's personal apartments, drinking a fine red wine and listening as the captain explained.

“It's all some complicated magical conspiracy, apparently,” he said. “I don't know all the details, because the Wizard Lord says they aren't
anyone's business, but I know what our orders were, and how we carried them out.” He set his glass on a table. “We were sent to find one particular wizard, a woman called the Blue Lady, and question her regarding this forbidden talisman someone had stolen.”

“A talisman?” Sword asked.

“Yes.”

“What sort of talisman?”

The captain shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said. “We were told that no one knew what it looked like, or what it did, but that the wizard would understand what we meant.”

“But if no one . . . ” Sword began.

Boss cut him off with a raised hand. “Let me handle this part, Erren.”

Sword frowned, and sipped wine.

“Captain,” she said, with a certain depth to her voice, “if the talisman was stolen, how is it no one had a description?”

“I
don't know,” he said, irritated. “It's all magic. Nasty, untrustworthy stuff. It's a damned good thing we have the Wizard Lord to protect us from it, and it'll be a good thing when it's gone.”

“Had the talisman been transformed, perhaps?”

“It might have been. I told you, I don't know.”

“Wizards all use a variety of talismans; how was this Blue Lady to know which one you meant?”

“It has a name, more or less,” the captain said. “The ninth talisman, it's called. That's what we were told to ask her about, at any rate—the ninth talisman. What became of the first eight, or whether there was a tenth or eleventh, I have no idea. I'm not a wizard, I'm just a soldier; I'm told what to do, and I do it.”

Boss and Sword exchanged glances; both of them understood now. Sword's hand brushed at the pocket where his own talisman was tucked away.

The Scholar had explained this to him, long ago. Originally there were only three Chosen: the Leader, the Seer, and the Swordsman. After the first Dark Lord, the Dark Lord of the Midlands, was defeated, the Council of Immortals had added the Beauty. After the Dark Lord of Tallowcrane was slain, the Thief became the fifth of the Chosen. The
Scholar had been added after the Dark Lord of Kamith t'Daru, the Archer after the Dark Lord of the Tsamas, and the Speaker after the Dark Lord of Goln Vleys.

Three Dark Lords had resigned peacefully, and those had not resulted in an additional member of the Chosen, but whenever a Dark Lord was killed by the Chosen, another role was added, so that future Wizard Lords might be further deterred from evil.

And seven years ago, Sword had killed the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills.

It had not occurred to him until now that the Council of Immortals might have added a ninth; certainly, no one had told
him
about any such addition. There had been no reason to think there might be a new member of the Chosen. Previous additions had not been kept secret; everyone had known the Speaker existed long before the Wizard Lord of the Galbek Hills went mad.

But the Wizard Lord apparently thought there might be a ninth—and if there were, then the Wizard Lord would have a corresponding new talisman in his own collection, so he was in a better position to know than anyone else.

That didn't seem to make sense, though, to have a ninth member of the Chosen that the other eight didn't know about, but the Wizard Lord did.

Except the Wizard Lord didn't seem to know
much
about the ninth, or he wouldn't have had to send his soldiers out to talk to wizards. Yes, the wizards would know if a ninth existed, since it would have been the Council of Immortals that created the role and the talisman, but hadn't Artil been a member of the Council?

And questioning wizards did not mean
killing
them . . .

“So the Wizard Lord thought this wizard had stolen this ninth talisman?” Boss asked.

“No, no,” the captain said. “We knew she didn't have the talisman, but she knew who did, and what it was supposed to do. At least, the Wizard Lord thought she did. Our orders were to find her, question her, learn everything we could about this talisman and who had it and where it was, and then report back—but if she didn't cooperate, we were to
use any methods we could to force her to reveal what she knew. If we couldn't get her to tell us, or if she harmed any of my men, then we were to consider her to be a rogue, and kill her.”

“So she told you?”

The captain sighed. “No, she didn't.” He shook his head. “Poor woman.”

“What happened?”

“We found her readily enough, just where the Wizard Lord told us she would be, and at first she was cooperative enough. We had a pleasant little talk about the changes the Wizard Lord has implemented—the roads, and the army . . . ”

“The what?” Boss interrupted.

“The army. The soldiers. We aren't just guards anymore, so we needed a new name for what we do. We're the Army of Barokan.”

“Oh. All right, go on.”

“Yes, well, we talked about the army and the roads and the Summer Palace and the Midlands Canal and the Shadowvale bridge project and the Blackport ferries, and we discussed whether she and the other wizards might help out on some projects, and whether she had any ideas for other improvements we might make. She had some interesting theories about what opening up travel this way might do to some of the stranger towns; she thought places like Drumhead might lose most of their population once people realized they could leave, and we talked about whether the priests there might close off the roads to prevent it. And then finally we got down to business, and I asked her about the ninth talisman.”

He sighed, picked up his glass, leaned back, and downed the rest of his wine.

“She got upset at that. Downright distraught. She didn't pretend she didn't know what we were talking about; she obviously did, even if
I
didn't. But she said she couldn't tell us anything—not wouldn't,
couldn't.
She was under a spell of some kind that prevented her from talking about it.

“We tried to find some way around it—writing messages, giving clues, something—but we couldn't. And then when we decided to sleep on it and continue in the morning, she tried to escape.” He sighed
again. “I'm just glad she couldn't fly. We caught her before she'd gone half a mile, and took her prisoner.

“I had my orders. We hanged her, with a short drop and a slipknot, so she strangled, her neck didn't break. I hoped that the spell might break before she died; I'd arranged a way she could signal if it did, even if she was too far gone to talk, so we could have cut her down. I kept a man with a knife ready at the rope, but it was no good—she died without telling us a thing.” He stared into the empty wineglass in his hand. “It was ugly. I was tempted to cut her down at the last minute, but I couldn't do it. How would I have explained to the Wizard Lord that we hadn't obeyed his orders? He'd set it all out, how she had to either talk or die, no exceptions, and we couldn't just bring her back to see if he could break the spell himself because she might be carrying some sort of trap or device.” He shook his head. “I don't know what this talisman thing is, but it must be very bad to have the Wizard Lord giving us orders like that.”

“You killed her?” Sword said. They were the first words he had spoken in almost an hour.

“We
had
to,” the captain replied unhappily.

“Didn't she . . . did she have any family?”

“I didn't see any.”

“Weren't her neighbors upset, though?” Boss asked.

He looked up from the glass, meeting her eyes. “You'd think they would be, wouldn't you? She seemed like a pleasant person. But no one seemed very distressed by her death; if the Wizard Lord ordered it, then that was that. People love him, you know—and they like
us,
his army. In some of these outlying towns they see our uniforms, and as soon as they realize what they mean, they cheer just at the sight of us. We don't need to do anything; just being the Wizard Lord's representative is enough. He's reshaped Barokan. So if he says some lonely old wizard had to die, people just shrug and say it's too bad.” He frowned. “I'm not sure that's a good thing, really, but it's the way it is.”

Boss nodded. “I see,” she said. She looked at Sword, and then repeated, “I see.”

Then she got to her feet, setting her own glass down.

“Thank you, Captain,” she said. Her voice shifted tone. “Thank you
very much. Now, if you would please forget everything you told us, I would appreciate it.”

“Of course,” the captain said, rising. “But I thought you wanted to ask me questions about the army?”

“No, thank you; I think I've heard enough.”

“But I've hardly said a word!”

“Sometimes a word is all I need,” Boss said. “Come, Erren.”

Sword woke from a nap to hear Azir shi Azir shouting, “He's coming! Lore is coming down the cliff!”

Sword rolled over and sat up. He stretched, then looked around for his boots.

Despite several intense conversations about the mysterious ninth talisman, the slaughter of wizards, and other topics of great interest, the last several days had mostly been dull; Boss had insisted that Sword and Bow should not set foot outside the house, as she considered them recognizable and she did not want their whereabouts to be generally known. The women were sufficiently disguised by their Host People attire, and Snatcher was unknown and in any case had his magical gift for stealth, but the Swordsman and the Archer were somewhat more recognizable.

“But the Wizard Lord will know where I am the instant he sets foot in Barokan,” Sword had protested.

“And we don't want anyone to know a moment sooner than that,” Boss had replied. “Besides, a few
ara
feathers would mean even
he
couldn't locate you exactly.”

Arguing with Boss was rarely productive, and the point about the
ara
feathers was a good one—Boss and Beauty had been filling the house with them and sewing them into everyone's clothing—so Sword hadn't put up much of a fight. He had yielded, and had stayed safely indoors, out of sight.

That had made his daily hour of sword practice a little more challenging, as he had to be careful not to poke holes in the walls or the other people, or to smash any of Beauty's furnishings. That was the good part; anything that made the required session more interesting was welcome. The opportunity to speak at length with the other Chosen was also pleasant enough; he and Azir shi Azir, in particular, spent
a good bit of time chatting, though these conversations often ended abruptly when something would touch on a memory of her life in Bone Garden. When that happened the Seer would suddenly fall silent, her face would go blank, and a moment later she would walk away and find herself somewhere private to recover.

Still, despite the company, Sword was beginning to feel shut in, deprived of sunlight and air, and he had gotten in the habit of taking frequent naps simply for lack of anything better to do. Beauty and Babble kept busy managing the household, but had made it clear they did not need or want any assistance—which suited Bow, Boss, and Snatcher, but left Sword and Azir increasingly edgy.

But now Lore was finally coming down the cliff, which would at the very least mean a change in the routine. Sword reached for his boot.

Just then door of the room slammed open, and Boss leaned in. “Is there any reason you should not accompany me to meet Lore?” she asked.

Sword blinked at her.

“Here's how I want it,” she said, before he could respond. “The Seer to spot him, me in charge, and a familiar face to reassure him. I think you'd serve best to reassure him, let him know that we didn't murder you for consorting with the Wizard Lord. If you've any argument to the contrary, speak up; if you don't, get those boots on.”