The Wizard Lord Read online

  And surely, if he were the Chosen Swordsman, one of the eight designated heroes, he could travel wherever in Barokan he pleased, and do more than tend crops until he died. He could go anywhere, speak to anyone, even the Wizard Lord himself.

  “I’ll do it,” he said.

  For a moment the pavilion fell silent, as a smile spread across the Swordsman’s face and the two wizards glanced at one another. Then a familiar voice muttered, “And they call me ‘Joker’!”

  Breaker half-turned and growled, “And they call me ‘Breaker.’ Shall I demonstrate why?”

  “Now, there’s no need for that,” the male wizard said quickly.

  “But he’s never even seen a sword before!” Joker protested.

  “Neither have you,” Breaker retorted. “Neither has any of us. What’s that have to do with it? It’s magic, isn’t it?”

  “That doesn’t mean there’s no effort involved,” the male wizard said hastily.

  “What, you need to talk to the ler?” Brokenose asked.

  “Oh, a little more than that,” the male wizard replied. “After all . . .”

  “You have to practice every day,” the Swordsman interrupted. “One hour every day, rain or shine, summer or winter, sick or well. If you don’t have a sword, you practice the movements without it. If you’re too sick to move, you review it in your head, moving whatever you can, even if it’s just your eyes. And you do it every day, or the ler won’t let you sleep, or eat, until you do.” He frowned. “I’m an old man, and I’m sick of it—I want some rest. That’s why I’m offering you a chance to replace me.”

  “I never heard that, about daily exercise,” Spitter said.

  “Why would you?” the Swordsman said. He glanced at the male wizard. “You think the Council of Immortals goes about spreading every little detail of their methods to any farmer who might ask?”

  “What happens if you just fast for a day, and don’t sleep, and wait it out?” Digger asked.

  The Swordsman grimaced, but before he could speak the wizard said, “You really wouldn’t want to do that.”

  “That would break the Swordsman’s oath to the Council of Immortals,” the female wizard added.

  “An oath that binds some very powerful ler,” her companion confirmed.

  “I was never fool enough to try it,” the Swordsman said. “I had enough problems without angering wizards and spirits.”

  “What of it?” Breaker asked. “Practice every day—that’s no problem. We haul water every day, tend the crops every day . . .”

  “Not in winter,” Spitter interjected.

  “We do some sort of work every day of our lives; this wouldn’t be so different. I’ll do it—or is there more to it?”

  “Well, of course there’s the whole bargain,” the male wizard said. “The whole reason the Chosen are Chosen.”

  “To kill the Wizard Lord,” Breaker said. He looked the Swordsman in the eye. “How many Wizard Lords have you killed?”

  “None,” the Swordsman snapped. “Even here, you must know that! I’ve been the Chosen Swordsman for forty-four years, since I wasn’t much older than you are, and I’ve seen three Wizard Lords hold power, and they’ve all served honorably and well so far—the weather has been good, the wizards well-behaved, criminals captured, the beasts held at bay. No one needed to remove them. And the Swordsman before me served for thirty-eight years and was never called, and the man before him . . . well . . .”

  “The man before him slew the Dark Lord of Goln Vleys,” the male wizard said. “But he lived happily for another twenty years afterward.”

  “So it’s been a hundred years or more since the Swordsman was summoned to kill a Wizard Lord,” Breaker said. “I don’t think I need to worry so very much about that part of the job.”

  “But the whole purpose of the magic is to defend against a corrupted Wizard Lord,” the female wizard reminded him. “You mustn’t forget that.”

  “Breaker, are you seriously considering this?” Joker asked quietly, all humor gone from his voice.

  Breaker turned. “What if I am?” he asked.

  “I think you should take your time about anything this important,” Joker said, still utterly serious. “Talk it over with your parents, with people you trust. Talk to the priestess, maybe consult some ler. This is . . . If this is true, if these people are who they claim to be, this is big, the biggest thing to ever happen here. Don’t let them ruin your life by dragging you into things too big for you.”

  “Too big for me?” Breaker snorted. “You think I can’t handle it?” But then he calmed, and said, “But you’re right—I don’t need to rush into it.”

  “You couldn’t rush into it in any case,” the male wizard said. “There’s a great deal to be done before the title can be handed on—you must be trained and prepared, the ler summoned and constrained, a sword found for you. And it may be you won’t be able to take the role; it requires natural ability, as well as magic, to be chosen as the world’s greatest swordsman.”

  “But you look like you’re capable enough,” the Swordsman said. “Don’t let old Islander here put you off.”

  Breaker looked at the Swordsman, then at the two wizards, and finally turned to Elder Priestess, who had been standing silently throughout the discussion. He half-expected her to tell him why he could not consider the strangers’ offer.

  “It’s your decision,” she said.

  “Then I’ll think about it,” Breaker said. “And I’ll have another beer.” He turned and held his mug out toward Brewer, who obliged.

  [2]

  Breaker woke up in his own bed, which was a pleasant surprise; he had no memory of returning home from the pavilion.

  He did remember most of the evening, though. He remembered the wizards and the old Swordsman, and his sister Harp chastising him, during a break in the dancing, for even considering their offer. He remembered Brewer rapping his knuckles on the last keg to demonstrate that the summer beer was indeed gone. He remembered Joker being surprisingly subdued the whole evening. He remembered singing along with “The Ballad of the Chosen,” or at least the verses he knew, and he had joined in the chorus for that old song about the Wizard Lord of the High Redoubt hunting down the three murderers. He remembered dancing with Curly and Little Weaver and even young Mudpie, and having the distinct feeling that Elder Priestess was watching him as he danced.

  But what had happened after the dancing ended was lost, drowned in the summer beer.

  Breaker sat up warily; sometimes the day after such a night found his head aching and his guts troubled. This time, though, the ler had been kind—he felt fine. The morning sun spilling in the window was still tinged with gold and slanting from low in the east, so he had not slept particularly late despite the beer and the dancing.

  And the barley harvest was in. Brewer’s boys would be busy for the next several days, starting the next batch of malt, and there were undoubtedly people cleaning the pavilion, but Breaker was in neither group. He could take a day or two to do nothing before starting preparations for winter.

  Or he could find those travelers, and ask if they had been serious in suggesting he might become the world’s greatest swordsman, one of the Chosen, the eight heroes designated to keep the Wizard Lord in check.

  Not that the present Wizard Lord was in any obvious need of restraint; he had been in power for a few years, and Breaker had heard not the slightest rumor of impropriety. The weather had been as well regulated as ever—sunny days relieved by scattered clouds and cool breezes, the gentle rain falling only late at night, and so on. No rogue wizards had been reported anywhere in Longvale. The wild beasts stayed in their caves and forests, and no travelers had been set upon and eaten. All was right in Barokan.

  Breaker glanced at the sunlit window, trying to remember just how long the present Wizard Lord had been in power. When had news of his predecessor’s resignation and the incumbent’s ascension reached Mad Oak?

  Breaker knew he had been old e
nough to understand the news, and to ask questions until his parents got annoyed enough to send him to bother Elder Priestess instead. It had been spring, he remembered; she had been walking the fields, talking to the ler, asking them to help the crops grow, and he had walked alongside, badgering her with pointless questions about wizards and true names and Chosen Heroes—except then the conversation had drifted to when he would be ready to work in the fields himself, doing more than running errands or gleaning.

  He must have been a few months short of his twelfth birthday, then, so that was almost eight years ago.

  If the Wizard Lord had behaved himself and ruled wisely for eight years, it seemed unlikely he would turn evil now.

  Not that Breaker understood why any Wizard Lord would ever go bad and need to be removed. After all, when all Barokan’s wizards appoint you to hold the power of life and death over them, when you are master of half the magic in the world, when you can control wild animals and even the weather itself, when you can go anywhere and do almost anything, why would you risk it all by breaking the rules?

  He knew from the stories that sometimes a Wizard Lord did go mad, or turn bad, so that the Chosen were summoned to slay him, but it seemed amazingly stupid. Maybe the first one, all those centuries ago, had thought he could somehow get away with it, but the others since then must have been fools.

  In most of the stories about Wizard Lords, of course, the Wizard Lord was the hero, protecting people from monsters or evil wizards, or tracking down criminals who fled beyond the boundaries where the priests couldn’t reach them, but there were those few Wizard Lords who had gone bad and been slain by the Chosen. Just a few, a handful, out of the dozens of wizards who had held the title.

  And of course, as the Swordsman had pointed out, none of them had done anything of the sort in more than a hundred years. The Chosen were still needed, just in case, but they didn’t need to do anything. They were like the guard on the cellars—as long as he was there no one tried to sneak in, even though all he did was stand ready.

  So becoming the Chosen Swordsman, or any of the others, wouldn’t mean he would actually need to kill a Wizard Lord; he would just need to be ready, and knowing that he was would keep the Wizard Lord from abusing his power.

  Would being the Swordsman mean he would meet all the other Chosen? Not that he particularly wanted to meet the Leader, or the Thief, but meeting the Beauty . . . he wouldn’t mind that. Or the Seer, who was privy to so many secrets.

  But unless they were summoned to slay a Wizard Lord, he supposed they would remain scattered across Barokan.

  How were they summoned, if they were needed? Elder hadn’t known, when he asked her all those years ago; she had just said she supposed it was magic.

  Those wizards would undoubtedly know, or the present Swordsman—and Breaker had the perfect excuse to ask them all the questions he wanted, if he was considering becoming the Swordsman’s replacement.

  Breaker wasn’t sure how serious he was about taking the job, but he definitely wanted to talk to those three again, preferably with less of an audience this time.

  He rose and found his drawers and his trews, and a moment later he ambled out to the kitchen to inquire about breakfast.

  His mother was rolling out dough, and did not look up as he entered, nor did she say a word. Breaker paused in the doorway. He knew she had heard him; her ears were sharp, and the occasional thump of the rolling pin would hardly disguise the thump of his footsteps. On any ordinary morning she would have looked up and wished him a good morning.

  His two younger sisters, Fidget and Spider, were sitting silently at the table, staring at him.

  He sighed.

  “What did I do?” he asked. “Or not do, if that’s the case.”

  The rolling pin stopped. “Harp told me about the strangers,” his mother replied.

  That stirred a few memories. His parents had not come to the harvest celebration; his father had reportedly felt ill, as he often did, and his mother had stayed home to make sure it was nothing serious. Fidget had brought the news, and had asked Elder Priestess to look in on Father on her way home, and maybe talk to the ler.

  “Is Father all right?” he asked.

  His mother snapped, “Don’t change the subject!”

  “I’m not . . . well, maybe I am, but I’d like to know.”

  “Elder says he ate something he shouldn’t have, as usual, but he’ll be fine. You, on the other hand, seem determined to ruin your life.”

  “I’m not determined to do anything, but yes, I’m considering the possibility of becoming the Chosen Swordsman. How would that ruin my life?”

  “You could get called away at any moment to traipse halfway across the world to kill the Wizard Lord! You’d kill the man who lets the crops grow, who sends the spring rain and hunts down killers. And if the call came in the middle of the harvest, or of planting, it wouldn’t matter—you’d have to go all the same, even if it meant losing the entire crop. And he might kill you, instead—it’s happened, you know. The Chosen don’t always all survive. The first Dark Lord killed something like half of them, my grandmother told me.”

  “That was what, a thousand years ago? Things are different now, Mother.”

  “Six or seven hundred, I think—less than a thousand, at any rate. And who says everything’s changed for the better? Maybe the Wizard Lords have gotten smarter again, and found ways around all the precautions!”

  “Mother, there hasn’t been a Dark Lord in a hundred years. The current Swordsman has never seen one, and the Swordsman before him didn’t, either. The wizards who choose the Wizard Lords have gotten smarter, and they don’t pick bad men anymore.”

  “How can you be sure of that? And if it’s true, then why do they need anyone to be Chosen?”

  “It’s just a precaution. A tradition. And I think I’d like being part of the tradition.”

  “They don’t pay you anything, do they? You’d still need to make your living in the barley fields or some other ordinary place, and do this sword nonsense in your spare time.”

  “I suppose,” Breaker said. He hadn’t really thought about that part—so few people in Mad Oak ever used money that it hadn’t occurred to him to worry about it.

  “So why would you want to do it, then? It’s extra work and danger, and what do you get in return?”

  “I don’t know,” Breaker admitted. “It’s just . . . well, I’d be famous. I could travel. And it ought to impress the girls, don’t you think? Don’t you want me to find a good wife, and sire some grandchildren for you?”

  His mother snorted derisively. “I don’t know what sort of girl would be impressed by foolishness like that.”

  Breaker thought that a good many girls would be, but he didn’t say that. Instead he said, “It’s a needed role, Mother. Someone has to do it.”

  “Even if that’s true, which I am not convinced of, why should that someone be you?”

  “Because I think it . . . oh, I don’t know. Because I want to, that’s all.”

  His mother stared at him for a moment, put down the rolling pin, crossed her arms on her chest, and then said, in her flattest and most deadly voice, “You want to be a killer?”

  “No, I do not want to be a killer,” Breaker replied. “What are you talking about?”

  “The Swordsman’s job, his whole purpose among the Chosen, is to kill the Dark Lord, and anyone else who tries to stop the Chosen from killing the Dark Lord. If you become the Chosen Swordsman, you’ll be accepting that role. You’ll be agreeing to kill people. You’ll be promising to stick a great big knife through someone’s chest. Is that what you want?”

  “But I won’t need to kill anyone! There aren’t any more Dark Lords!”

  “But you’ll have agreed to do it if a Dark Lord happens.”

  “I suppose, but . . .”

  “You’ll be a killer.”

  “I’ll be a Chosen Hero, and yes, that might mean killing someone, but only those who deserve to die. W
hat’s wrong with that?”

  His mother stared at him for another moment, then threw up her hands with an exasperated “Oooohhhh!” and stamped out of the room.

  Breaker watched her go, genuinely puzzled. Yes, the Swordsman and the other Chosen killed people, when it became necessary, but they were heroes; it was part of the job. His mother knew that; she had certainly told him enough stories about heroes who slew men and monsters right and left. She had told stories about the horrible vengeance Wizard Lords enacted on rogue wizards and other fugitives with great relish, including plenty of gruesome details, and she never seemed to think there was anything wrong with that.

  How was it any different if her son became the Swordsman?

  Then his gaze fell, and he saw that Fidget and Spider were staring at him.

  “Oh, shut up,” he said.

  “I didn’t say a word!” Fidget protested.

  “I didn’t, either,” Spider said. “It wasn’t us. Are ler talking to you?”

  “No,” Breaker snapped. “I’m not a priest or a wizard.”

  “Will you be if you become the Swordsman?”

  Breaker started to say no, then stopped. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “Would you really kill people?”

  “Only bad wizards,” Breaker assured her. “Not real people. No one from Mad Oak.”

  Spider nodded a solemn acceptance of this; Fidget looked less certain, but Breaker left the subject at that as he began rummaging through the cupboards for something to break his fast.

  Spider and Fidget managed to maintain a surprising and atypical silence while they ate; their mother did not return, and when Breaker had taken the edge off his appetite he decided that she wasn’t going to return while he was there.

  He still did not entirely understand the reasons for her anger, but he knew better than to try to dissuade her; he had never been able to talk her out of one of her moods. His father or Harp sometimes could, but Breaker had never quite figured out how. As far as Breaker was concerned, the best thing to do was to simply be somewhere else until his mother had worked through her anger on her own. Accordingly, as soon as his stomach stopped growling he waved a quick farewell to his sisters and headed out of the house and up the slope toward the pavilion.