The Ninth Talisman (35 page)

“Wizards are very fond of tradition,” Sword remarked.

“Yes, they are, so they
should
have added a new role after you killed
the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills, shouldn't they? But I don't know whether they did.”

“You don't know?”

“No.” He shook his head. “No one's told me anything about a ninth.”

“Who would have created the ninth talisman?” Boss asked. “Who would know?”

“The way it's worked for all the others was that after the new Wizard Lord was appointed, the Council met in secret and devised the new role. Then they collected the necessary magic, summoned the necessary
ler,
and created the paired talismans. They gave one talisman to the new member of the Chosen first, and then presented the other talisman to the Wizard Lord. The new Chosen then went to the Leader and informed him of what the Council had done. No one told the Wizard Lord, though usually the new role became common knowledge long before the next Dark Lord happened along.”

“No one informed
me
of anything,” Boss said.

“You probably weren't the Leader yet,” Lore replied.

A sudden hush fell.

“Do you really think that's it?” Azir asked, breaking the silence. “Because then I probably wasn't the Seer yet, and if the new Chosen always carried
ara
feathers, that would explain why I never sensed him clearly.”

“You haven't sensed one?” Lore said. “Then why do you think there
is
one?” He looked from Sword to Boss, and back.

“Because that's what his men have been questioning wizards about,” Boss said.

“Questioning?” Lore visibly relaxed. “I thought you said
killing
wizards!”

“I did,” Boss replied. “He's been sending soldiers to question them about the ninth talisman, and if the wizards don't answer, the soldiers kill them. We know for certain that they've killed the Blue Lady—hanged her—and we've been told that they've killed at least three others, as well.”

“The Blue Lady? Liria vil Surulin aza Kilorim Nolaris hela Tiri? That Blue Lady?”

“How would
we
know her true name?” Boss demanded.

“That was her name,” Babble said quietly.

“I thought they were
friends,
she and Artil!” Lore exclaimed.

“Well, his men killed her anyway,” Boss said. “She wouldn't tell them anything about the ninth talisman. Reportedly she said she
couldn't
tell them, that there was a spell on her preventing it.”

“And they killed her anyway?” Lore sounded genuinely horrified.

“Yes.”

“Because of the ninth Chosen?”

“So it would seem.”

“But that's . . .  he knows that's wrong. He's allowed to kill wizards if they do anything forbidden, but he's not allowed to interfere with the Chosen.”

Sword cocked his head. “You think it's worse that he's asking about the ninth talisman than that he's killing people?”

“No, I . . . it's not…” Lore stopped, took a deep breath, and began again.

“I'm not saying anything right now about what's right and wrong,” he said, looking from face to face. “But part of my role among the Chosen is to say whether or not the Wizard Lord is following the rules set down for him, the rules that determine when we are supposed to depose or kill him.
Under those rules,
as set down by the Council of Immortals themselves, interfering with the selection, creation, or actions of the Chosen is indeed a worse offense than killing wizards who appear to be innocent of wrongdoing. The assumption is that wizards can appear innocent while actually being guilty of horrible crimes or posing a serious danger to Barokan, while interfering with the Chosen
must
be assumed to be an attempt to protect himself from us, which in turn implies he has a reason to believe the Chosen are a danger to him, which implies that he knows he's done something wrong. You see?”

“So we're never to give any wizard the benefit of the doubt?” Beauty asked. “Neither the ones he kills, nor the Wizard Lord himself?”

“That's right, we aren't. The wizards themselves set the system up that way.”

“Seems foolish of them,” Snatcher remarked.

“Wizards are traditionally more afraid of each other than of anything else in the world,” Sword replied.

“Well, this Wizard Lord doesn't seem to be afraid of other wizards,” Boss said. “He's killing them for nothing.”

“Not for nothing,” Beauty protested. “He's trying to find out about the ninth talisman.”

“I'm not convinced there
is
a ninth talisman,” Boss said. “And if there is, does it make any sense to kill people who
can't
tell you what you want to know about it? Wouldn't it be better to keep them around and try to break the spell?”

“Maybe he's just eliminating magic,” Lore suggested. “The talisman is just an excuse. He certainly talks enough about wanting a Barokan without magic—killing all the wizards is a step on the way there.”

“Rather a drastic one,” Sword said.

“And he's not killing himself,” Bow pointed out. “He's a wizard.”

“I don't think he's ready to go
that
far,” Lore said. “But he does spend months in the Summer Palace, where he has no magic.”

“And he hasn't killed
all
the other wizards, so far as we know,” Boss said. “The wizard I spoke to said he'd found two others still alive.”

“The Wizard Lord's men might not have gotten to them yet,” Lore suggested.

“You think he really wants to eliminate magic?” Sword asked. “That's not just an excuse?”

“You don't think he just wants power?” Boss asked. “If he can rule without magic, then besides the wizards, he can kill the eight of us without losing anything he cares about. Which might just be what he's planning, and why he's so anxious to find out about this supposed ninth.”

Lore hesitated, plainly unhappy with the question.

“You have to remember,” he said, “I didn't have my magic up there. I don't necessarily remember the entire truth. Even down here, I can't always tell truth from falsehood, and in the Uplands I'm no better at it than anyone else—perhaps worse, since I've had less practice. This is only my opinion, and I have no magical knowledge to support it. That said, I don't think it's
power
he wants, exactly. Not power for its own sake.”

“Care to explain that?” Boss demanded.

“He told me this, late one night,” Lore said. “He wants to
make things better.
He became a wizard in the first place because he thought magic could make things better. He grew up in Caper, where the
ler
are whimsical and harsh, and he heard the stories about Drumhead and Bone Garden, and he always had the feeling that things
ought
to be better, that people could lead happier, richer, more comfortable lives, if only the priests weren't catering to the inhuman forces of the natural world.”

“I've visited Caper,” the Archer muttered. “If he's from there, I'm not surprised he's a bit mad.”

“So he became a wizard in hopes of making things better, but he found he couldn't really do much,” Lore continued. “He could do miraculous things, but only in limited ways. He couldn't defy any of the established priesthoods—that would violate the rules of the Council of Immortals, and the Wizard Lord would kill him. He couldn't change anything important—he tried, but the priests were too afraid, the
ler
too set in their ways. He couldn't even set foot in many towns without first promising the local priests he wouldn't do anything to upset the traditional ways—the
ler
would recognize him as a danger and forbid him entry.”

Sword remembered the first time he had ever seen Artil im Salthir, then known as the Red Wizard. The wizard had been hanging in the air above the village square in Mad Oak because the town's
ler
would not let him land. Sword had not thought anything of it at the time, since he had so little experience of wizards, but now he saw it in a new light.

“He concluded that because magic derives from
ler,
it's inherently opposed to change. The world as we know it is what the
ler
have made it, what we've made it by cooperating with
ler.
If we want something better, we need to impose it on the
ler,
on nature, by force.”

“And the only one who might be able to do that is the Wizard Lord,” Sword said, remembering how the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills had forced
ler
into unnatural behavior in his attempts to deter the Chosen.

“So he arranged to become the Wizard Lord,” Boss said.

“Or at least, seized the opportunity,” Sword said. “I don't think he had anything to do with Galbek Hills' becoming a Dark Lord.”

“Yes,” Lore said. “Exactly. He grabbed his chance. And now he's
trying to impose his will on the
ler,
pushing roads through the wilderness, defying the natural border between Barokan and the Uplands, setting up authority and organization independent of the priesthoods, so he can make Barokan better without magic.”

“And you don't consider that wanting power?” Boss asked.

“Not power over
people,”
Lore said. “Power over
nature.”

“We live in nature,” Beauty remarked.

“We're
part
of nature,” Boss corrected her.

“But he wants to make things
better,”
Lore insisted. “For everyone.”

“Not like Farash, who just wants to make things better for himself,” Sword said.

“Don't talk to me about Farash,” Boss grumbled. “You realize that if there really
is
a ninth talisman, and a ninth member of the Chosen, it's
Farash
who probably knows all the details? If they informed the Leader, and it was before I took the role, then it was Farash they told. The Wizard Lord is sending his armies out interrogating and butchering wizards, when his chief advisor probably already knows all the answers.”

“We don't know that,” Sword said.

“Farash may be how he knows there
is
a ninth talisman,” Lore said. “Assuming there really is one. Maybe the wizards didn't tell Farash enough of what Artil wants to know.”

“So Artil's slaughtering wizards just to
improve
things,” Boss sneered.

“He
does
want to improve things!” Lore insisted.

“I don't consider rainy days and crop failures an improvement,” Boss said. “And I'm fairly certain the dead wizards wouldn't consider their removal an improvement.”

“But the roads!” Lore said. “The canals and bridges and ferries! The Boar of Linden Corner, the Mad Oak, all those other menaces he's removed! And . . . and he has other things planned . . . ”

“He can do those from down here, and do them without killing anyone,” Boss said coldly.

Lore fell silent, looking around helplessly.

“So what do you plan to do?” Sword asked Boss.

She did not answer him directly, but instead said, “So killing those wizards isn't necessarily a reason to remove him?”

Lore shrugged. “Not necessarily, but we don't necessarily
need
a reason. We're the Chosen; the rules say we are to use our own judgment.”

“All the same, I'd like to be able to point to a rule he's definitely broken,” Boss said. “Lore, is there anything in all the stories, all the histories, about whether the Wizard Lord is required to stay in Barokan? Has it ever come up before?”

Lore hesitated, then said, “Not directly. The Dark Lord of Spider Marsh apparently fled from the Chosen at one point by sailing beyond the Western Isles, but then thought better of it and returned to negotiate. He had discovered that his ability to purify seawater so that he and his crew could drink it vanished if he traveled beyond Barokan's waters.”

One of the more incomprehensible lines in an old ballad, about “he sailed where the sea's salt could not be cleansed,” suddenly made sense to Sword, but it hardly seemed relevant. “That's it?” he asked.

“That's it,” Lore said.

“But he is charged with protecting Barokan?” Boss asked.

“Of course; it's part of his oath.”

“He's not protecting us from this heat and rain,” Bow said.

“That isn't part of the oath,” Lore said. “He's sworn to protect Barokan from rogues and madmen, and those who would use magic to harm others, and from other threats to the peace. It doesn't say anything about weather.”

“Is he charged with using
magic
to protect Barokan?” Sword asked.

Lore stopped and stared at Sword for a moment as he considered that, then said, “I believe he is. The wording is not entirely unambiguous, but yes, his oath says that he is given the talismans of the Wizard Lord to use them in his task of defending the people of Barokan.”

“Then he's in violation of his oath,” Boss said, “and this needs to be pointed out to him.”

“I assume you mean with an arrowhead,” Bow said. “I believe I ought to be able to hit him as he comes down the cliff—he's fairly distinctive in those red robes of his.”

“We don't really want to just
kill
him,” Sword said. “People love him, you know. The roads have made everyone feel rich, they've made life exciting. I'm not saying we should just let him go on killing wizards, or do nothing about the ones already slain, but just putting an arrow
through his heart doesn't seem wise. We should probably give him a chance to make it right somehow. At the very least, he should be offered the option of resigning peacefully; he said that he would choose abdication over death.” He turned to Lore. “You were there when he said that.”