The Ninth Talisman (40 page)

About twenty of the archers in front of the Winter Palace had regrouped into a line, and were marching up the street, forming a solid barrier from one side to the other, herding the Host People ahead of them, out of the plaza and away from the palace.

For a moment Sword thought he must have been seen and recognized, that the archers were pursuing him—after all, the Wizard Lord had said his archers would kill the Swordsman. Then he realized that this was not
all
the archers who had formed up in the square; it was, he estimated, no more than a fifth of them.

The others were probably marching up the other four streets that led out of the plaza. They hadn't located him; they were clearing the area. Perhaps they had realized their spy wasn't coming, and had gone to an alternate plan.

If he took on those other soldiers now he would be exposing himself to the archers, and he did not think he could take on
all
of those soldiers and win. The spearmen could corner him and stand back while the archers peppered him with volleys of arrows, and he knew he wouldn't be able to block
all
of them.

He lowered his hand.

“Ready!” someone shouted.

Sword turned to see that the torchbearers had set their bundles of
straw around Beauty's house, and the spearmen had formed up in a square surrounding the building as best they could, given its location. The dozen women had taken up positions around the front door, weapons poised.

“Light!”

And four torches were thrust into bundles of straw, which flared up with a roar.

Sword stared in horror; weren't they going to give the Chosen inside a chance to surrender? He knew the Wizard Lord hadn't mentioned any such offer, but Sword had assumed that surely, Artil would prefer to take the Chosen alive, to retain as much of his own magic as possible.

Apparently Artil was more serious than Sword had thought about giving up magic entirely. Sword's hand crept up over his shoulder once again.

The stamping of the archers suddenly stopped; Sword threw a quick glance back at them to see them ranged across the street, watching their comrades and the leaping flames. He turned his own attention back to the house, preparing to rush in and save his companions.

It was already too late. The fire had spread impossibly, unnaturally fast, and Sword realized that the Wizard Lord's magic was helping it grow. Wind was swirling unnaturally around the house, rippling the dust in the street and pulling the flames upward along the walls, and ancient sap seemed to be oozing from the wood and bursting into flame as well. Smoke billowed around every shuttered window and barred door. The crackling of the torches had become a great roar.

The house must be empty, Sword told himself as the fire spread and smoke billowed up, it
must
be. His companions could not be inside there. Azir and Babble would have fled when they heard the soldiers coming, wouldn't they?

But then the front door swung open and two women came staggering out, coughing and sobbing, hands raised in surrender. Sword started forward.

He had no time. He had barely begun to move when the waiting swordswomen cut the two fleeing Chosen down, chopping at them as if the swords were giant cleavers; there was no grace or skill to it at all, only butchery. Sword froze, and stared in shocked disbelief. Blood
sprayed, some hissing as it scattered across burning straw. Azir shi Azir managed a single piercing scream as she fell; Babble was saying something, but Sword could not hear it over the shouting and the roar of the blaze.

Then both were lying on the ground, the swordswomen still hacking at them, and Sword saw Babble's head jerk and roll to one side in a totally unnatural fashion.

Sword saw that the head was no longer attached to her body, and knew that Babble, the Speaker of All Tongues, Gliris Tala Danria shul Keredi bav Sedenir, was dead.

And Azir shi Azir ath Lirini kella Paritir jis Taban of Bone Garden, the Seer of the Chosen, who had once been called Feast but had freed herself from that fate, was dead as well, after just six years in her role. Sword had not acted quickly enough to save them; he had not really acted at all.

His hand closed around the hilt of his sword, but he did not draw it; he tried to force himself to think rationally, despite his rage and horror. He desperately wanted to draw his blade and use it to avenge his companions, but the line of archers was there behind him, waiting for him to reveal himself. He hesitated.

And an arrow appeared in one swordswoman's eye; she dropped in her tracks, her bloodied sword falling from her hand as she crumpled to the hard-packed earth of the street.

Sword stared. He knew that just moments earlier he would have reacted to this death with outrage, but he had just seen the woman chop two of his friends to pieces. Even now, as the swords woman lay on the dirt beside them, she was still fully human in appearance despite the shaft projecting incongruously from her eye, while Azir and Babble were little more than bloody meat.

A second swordswoman spun and fell, an arrow through her throat.

Sword had not seen where the arrows came from, had not heard the snap of a bowstring over the chaos of the fire and panicking Host People, but he knew whose arrows they were. He had seen that fletching before—and who else could it be?

A third swordswoman fell dead, an arrow through her heart. Someone
one was shouting orders again, and a few of the soldiers were pointing back toward the plaza, the direction from which the arrows had come.

A fourth swordswoman had ducked back, weapon raised, as she saw what had befallen her fellows; it did her no good, as a fourth arrow speared through her chest. She staggered back a single step, then slumped to the ground.

A fifth fell, and a sixth; the survivors were screaming, falling back, taking shelter behind the spearmen. A seventh took an arrow between the shoulder blades and fell into a spearman's arms.

But then the remaining five women were cowering behind cover of one sort or another—mostly their male companions—and the arrows stopped.

For a second Sword wondered if the Archer might be done; after all, he surely couldn't have enough arrows to kill
all
the Wizard Lord's soldiers. Then a torchbearer let out a shout and fell, an arrow piercing his chest.

The other torchbearers went down in quick succession after that, but more people were shouting commands and pointing; the Archer's position had definitely been located, and the remaining swordswomen were out of his line of fire.

Every beat of Sword's heart was telling him to draw his sword and spring to his comrade's aid, to defend Bow and avenge Seer and Babble, but his head still had those relayed words ringing in it—”stay alive, stay free.”

And that last instruction: “Sword, Bow, anyone—if you get a chance, kill him.”

These guards and soldiers weren't the real threat; they were tools, swayed by the Wizard Lord's power and magical persuasion. It was the Wizard Lord himself, Artil im Salthir dor Valok seth Talidir, who most deserved to die—and it was Sword's duty to kill him.

Which he could not do if he died alongside Bow.

He took his hand from his sword, and stepped back, trying to blend into the background.

The spearmen were forming up into three lines, two of the surviving swordswomen crouching behind them; the other three women, Sword
realized, were in an alley just north of Beauty's house, where Bow presumably could not see them.

The line of archers had turned, and now Sword heard the snap of a bowstring as one of them loosed an arrow at Bow.

Bow's response was so quick it was almost as if the archer's own arrow had turned in midflight; it took him in the neck, and he let out an inhuman croak as he crumpled.

Three more bowstrings twanged, and then a dozen, and then at a shouted order the archers broke their line and scattered to either side as the spearmen began marching back toward the plaza—toward Bow.

When they had passed his own position Sword could see that those two swordswomen were still following them, half-crouched and uncertain; he could no longer stand it. Orders or not, logic notwithstanding, he had to act. He drew his sword and sprang forward.

It was much easier killing than disarming; there was no need for the sort of care and precision he had used before. He slew both women in seconds by slashing their throats, and then began on the back row of spearmen.

The others stopped their advance and tried to turn on him, but because he was in their midst the result was chaos. He could strike out with impunity, since he was alone, while the spearmen were tangling with each other and had to be careful not to stab their fellows. He had killed or seriously wounded perhaps half of them when the first arrow whirred past his ear.

For an instant he thought it was Bow coming to his aid, but then more arrows flew, forcing him to duck, and he realized that the Wizard Lord's archers were now shooting at him, untroubled by the presence of their own spearmen.

In fact, one of the spearmen went down with an arrow in his shoulder even as Sword recognized the situation.

It was time to go, Sword decided. It was time to flee, to stay free. He had done enough to give Bow time to escape, and he had helped avenge poor Azir and Babble. There was no point in dying here, no need to slaughter the remaining soldiers, even if he could. They were not the true enemy; the Wizard Lord was—and perhaps Farash inith Kerra, if
he had had a hand in planning this, if perhaps he had poisoned this Wizard Lord's mind.

Sword whirled, knocking a lowered spear down and aside so that it tripped another man, creating a moment of utter confusion, and used that to cover him as he fled back up the street, running as hard as he could, bloody sword bare in his hand.

His flight was not random, though—he had chosen his route carefully. He was headed for the alley where the last three swordswomen had taken shelter.

He found them sitting side by side against a wall; three slashes of the sword disposed of them. Only the third even had time to lift her own blade in an ineffectual parry before he was done.

And then he concentrated entirely on running and dodging, twisting and turning through the back streets of Winterhome until he was certain he had, at least for the moment, outrun his pursuers.

Sword sat in the dirt with his back against the stone wall of one of the immense guesthouses, and wiped the last traces of blood from his blade. Then he lay the weapon across his lap. Sheathing it on his back was too awkward while he was sitting, and he was too tired to get up.

The banner flying from the guesthouse showed a ring of five golden stars on a red background. Sword had no idea which Uplander clan that might represent, and didn't much care. Whoever it was, they were still up above the cliffs, and would not be arriving until the approach of winter; the Wizard Lord had returned to Barokan at least a month, perhaps two, before the Uplanders would.

That meant it would still be at least a week or two before the Host People came to prepare the guesthouse for occupancy, and until then it would be shuttered and empty. The only people who might find him here would have to be actively looking for him.

Of course, there undoubtedly
were
people looking for him. After all, he and Bow had slaughtered more than a score of the Wizard Lord's troops.

Sword shuddered.

He had trouble believing it had really happened. All those people, dead in the street. Azir and Babble, hacked to pieces as he watched.

And he, personally, had killed a dozen or so.

He didn't even
know
how many he had killed; that was so appalling he had trouble accepting it, but the thought of carefully working through his memories step by step to count his victims was even worse.

He remembered when he was first considering accepting the role of the Chosen Swordsman, how his mother had asked him, “You want to be a killer?”

He had told her that no, he didn't intend to kill anyone, that the Chosen had not been called upon in a century and there was no reason to think they would ever be called upon again—and yet here he was, eight years later, and not only had he killed the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills, who unquestionably deserved it, but now he had hacked his way through a whole company of guards. The streets of Winterhome were red with blood.

How could he ever face his mother again?

How could he face
anyone
again? How was he going to survive this?

At least the question of whether the Wizard Lord needed to be removed was settled. The Wizard Lord and the Chosen were openly at war now, and the Wizard Lord had struck the first real blow, capturing two and killing two of the eight Chosen.

Capturing
at least
two, and killing
at least
two. Sword realized he didn't know what had become of some of the others.

Boss, the Leader, was captured. Lore, the Scholar, was captured. Azir, the Seer, was dead; Babble, the Speaker of All Tongues, was dead.