The Summer Palace (31 page)

Sword froze.

He had already been concerned about throwing a spear well enough to kill the Wizard Lord, and now he would need to strike him through a drawn curtain.

He couldn't do it. He knew how good he was with a spear—and more important, how good he
wasn't.
He was not going to inflict a fatal wound through that drapery, not unless he was fabulously lucky.

Of course, sometimes luck could be provided. Fortune had favored him already, in putting him here in time to catch the Wizard Lord; perhaps it could be coaxed to do more.

“O
ler,
” he whispered, “will you guide my aim? Will you see that my spear strikes him down?”

There was no answer.

“Of course you won't,” he said. “This is the Uplands, where all
ler
are wild, but weak.”

Only weak when the birds have come,
something reminded him. It was very faint.

So
ler
were listening, just not cooperating—and that might not be their choice, given the shaft of the spear he was holding, how near his feathered coat was to his right arm, and how many other factors were weakening their power. And since the spear itself was made of
ara
bone and sinew,
ler
probably
couldn't
guide it.

The Wizard Lord's chair was approaching, and behind it Sword could see more people—more guards, and others. He recognized one face immediately.

Farash inith Kerra.

Farash the traitor, who had betrayed the Chosen to the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills.

Farash, who had enslaved the town of Doublefall.

Farash, who had mocked Zrisha oro Sal thir Karalba by naming her as the new Leader of the Chosen.

Farash, chief advisor to the Wizard Lord.

Sword tightened his grip on the spear. Farash wasn't hidden by curtains, or riding in a chair that made him a smaller target, and he certainly deserved to die. . . .

But if Sword killed Farash, he would be letting everyone know he was here, and his chances of ever getting at the Wizard Lord would be lessened. He lowered the spear again. Perhaps, if he survived killing Artil, he could then go after Farash, but Artil's death was the higher priority.

He looked over the others following the Wizard Lord's chair, and saw several familiar faces, but no one he could attach a name to, no one he considered especially important. The captain of the guard was there, Sword recognized him, but Boss wasn't there, nor was Lore; he had hoped that perhaps Artil might have brought them along, and that he, Sword, might have a chance to free them.

Snatcher wasn't there, so far as he could see, but the Thief was a master of disguise; he could easily be one of those soldiers or courtiers or servants, so thoroughly changed in appearance that Sword had not spotted him.

Beauty couldn't disguise herself unless she hid her face entirely, and Sword could see no sign of her in the procession, no one who might have been her. If she was still alive and free, she wasn't here.

Although Bow had no great skill at disguises, he did have the knack of not being noticed. It didn't work as well on Sword and the other Chosen as it did on ordinary folk, and for that matter it might not work at all here, outside the borders of Barokan, but Sword could not be absolutely certain the Archer wasn't here somewhere. He had heard Uplanders say that the Archer was dead, but he did not necessarily believe it; the Wizard Lord was very good at spreading lies.

Still, it seemed unlikely that Bow could be there. He was a man
fond of direct and simple action; if he were able to get this close to the Wizard Lord, he would have already shot him, he wouldn't be carrying out any sort of stealth or deception.

So if any of the Chosen were here, other than himself, it would be Snatcher, the Thief—or perhaps the mysterious holder of the ninth talisman, if there really was one.

Sword had wondered often about that ninth talisman during the long, cold winter. He had no idea what role the Council of Immortals might have thought up, if they actually had devised a ninth member of the Chosen; his attempts to guess at one had never been convincing. Sword really didn't see any other role that needed to be filled; the eight Chosen had every talent they needed.

Was the ninth talisman simply a ruse, then? Artil had said he had been unable to use the Talisman of Trust effectively, even though he knew it was powerful; perhaps it
wasn't
really powerful. Its power might be an illusion, an attempt to convince the Wizard Lord that he had an unknown enemy with unknown abilities, to discourage him from turning against the Chosen. Perhaps it wasn't really linked to another talisman at all.

Perhaps it
was
just a trick that had backfired. Artil had killed most of the Council, and had done so in part because of the ninth talisman. But if there really
was
a ninth member of the Chosen, he or she might be among the party marching up the canyon, and Sword would have no way of knowing.

If poor Azir, the Seer, were still alive, she might know. She had never been able to sense a ninth member of the Chosen clearly, but she hadn't been certain there wasn't one, either.
Ara
feathers could have hidden the ninth from her, or if not feathers, then some other magic might have been responsible.

But Azir shi Azir was dead, cut to pieces on the streets of Winter-home, and it was Sword's job to avenge her, with or without the aid of any theoretical and mysterious ninth Chosen.

And it was clear now that he was not going to manage it here, from ambush, as he had hoped. That curtained chair protected the Wizard Lord from his spear as effectively as any armor.

But he would not stay in the chair forever. In an hour or so he would be at the Summer Palace, presumably inspecting the damage Sword had inflicted on the place.

Sword knew every inch of the palace—all the servants' corridors and hidden stairs, every niche and corner. And he had a way in that the Wizard Lord didn't know about.

He watched for a moment longer as the parade of Barokanese trudged past; then he slid silently back from the canyon edge. He had not been spotted yet, but there was no need to take any further risks.

He could not go back to the tunnel immediately; there were too many people on the way from the canyon to the palace. He would need to wait until everyone had arrived at the gates. That would probably not happen until dusk.

He sank to his belly and lay quietly on the sandy soil of the Upland, aware that only a thin layer separated him from the solid stone of the plateau and the cliffs, stone that had been alive with
ler
all winter, but which slept now. He lay there, and thought about the Wizard Lords, and about the Chosen, and about the Council of Immortals.

Maybe the Uplanders had the right idea, eschewing magic entirely. No rogue wizards to worry them, no Wizard Lord, no Chosen to keep the Wizard Lord in check. Sword remembered poor little Azir shi Azir, the Chosen Seer, who had grown up in Bone Garden with the horribly simple and descriptive name “Feast.” There could never be a nightmare like Bone Garden among the Uplanders; they would never allow their
ler
to demand the horrors that the
ler
of Bone Garden did, and surely, no human beings would ever create such a place on their own.

That had been priests who told Azir shi Azir that she was destined to be eaten by her fellow townsfolk, priests serving as the link between humans and
ler.

It had been one of the Chosen, their former Leader, Farash inith Kerra, who now walked behind the Wizard Lord, who had ensor-celled the entire town of Doublefall and taken several of its most beautiful young women as his harem. He had later freed them, and
even chosen one of them as his successor, but still—one of the
Chosen,
the sworn
defenders
of Barokan, had enslaved a town with his magic.

And both Azir and Boss had been slain on the orders of Artil im Salthir, the Wizard Lord of Winterhome.

The Wizard Lords had prevented rogue wizards from running roughshod over the ordinary people of Barokan for seven hundred years, but even so, magic had still been abused. Wizards had been restrained, but the priests, the Wizard Lords, the Chosen, had all, at one time or another, done shameful, disgraceful things with their magic-derived power.

The Uplanders used no magic, and they seemed to do well enough without it. They kept slaves sometimes, but surely, there was nothing in all the Uplands to compare to what had happened in Bone Garden or Doublefall or Winterhome.

Artil said that magic was weakening throughout Barokan; the Upland
ler
had implied that this was because so many
ara
feathers and things made of
ara
bones and hide had been brought down by the Uplanders and traded to the Barokanese. The magic-dampening effects of
ara
were spreading throughout Barokan, little by little, and accumulating over time. Artil wanted to speed up the process, and eliminate magic from Barokan, and the more Sword thought about it, the more he thought that would be a good thing—but the way the Wizard Lord was going about it was anything
but
good.

The memory of Babble and Azir lying dead in the street came to him again.

An end to magic would be a good thing—but that end did not justify the means Artil was using. Artil had to die for his crimes. Sword would see to it that he did.

And after that, there would be no more Wizard Lords. The Council of Immortals was broken, the handful of survivors scattered. The Chosen, too, were scattered, some of them dead. The old system was destroying itself.

And when it was gone, what then?

The various towns would presumably govern themselves, as they
always had. Who would maintain the roads, though? Who would tend the canals and the other structures Artil's men had built? What would become of his hundreds of soldiers?

What would become of the surviving Chosen?

What would become of Sword?

He didn't know—and right now, he didn't care. He just wanted Artil dead.

He lay on the sand, waiting for dark.

His second trip inbound through the tunnel in utter darkness was even easier than the first; his body remembered the twists and turns surprisingly well. He had once again carefully removed his feather-laden coat, and checked every other garment he wore for any obvious traces of
ara,
and this time he remembered to pull the
ara
-feather rosettes from his boots. He stashed the coat with his pack and spear at the tunnel entrance. He made sure that from the skin out, he was dressed entirely in the
ara
-free clothing he had worn during the winter, when he had been in communion with the Uplander
ler.
Whether the
ler
were guiding him, or whether it was simply experience, he didn't know; he knew only that he was able to slip through the narrow passage even more quickly than before.

He had brought his sword, even though it was sometimes awkward to maneuver it through the tunnel.

As he neared the end he could hear voices and footsteps.

He paused, still in total darkness, and listened.

This time there was no single conversation that told him what he needed to know, but snatches of several exchanges—shouted orders, shouted responses, the clatter of doors, the thump of boots.

The Wizard Lord's soldiers were searching the palace.

He could not judge whether they actually expected to find him still hiding somewhere, or whether they were just seeing whether he had left any traps, or interesting evidence of what he might have planned for their master. The commands, questions, and answers were not detailed enough to be certain.

Two soldiers were searching the cellar storeroom where his tunnel
emerged. He held his breath, hoping they would not be thorough enough to find the loose stones that closed off his access.

“Does that wall look right to you?” one of them asked.

Carefully, Sword reached out his hands and pressed on the stones, holding them in place. Faint candlelight flickered through one of the cracks, blindingly bright after the utter blackness that filled the tunnel.

“One of the masons was a little sloppy, perhaps,” his companion said.

Then Sword felt a tug on one of the stones, and he pressed down hard to keep it from moving.

“I suppose,” the first agreed.

“Can you influence them?” Sword whispered silently. “Please, O
ler
? Make them not find the tunnel.”

We cannot ensure that, but we can make it less likely.
The words were surprisingly strong and clear, much stronger than those he had sensed on the canyon rim—but then, he was no longer wearing feathers, or carrying an
ara
-bone spear.

“Anything. Please.”

Done.

“Someone should touch up the mortar there,” one of the voices said.

“It's the back of a larder,” the other retorted. “Who
cares
if it's a bit crooked? If we weren't poking around here with lanterns, we'd never have noticed a thing!”