The Ninth Talisman (5 page)

That triggered a round of murmuring, and Sword sighed again.

“Are you sure we should
let
them get here?” Curly asked.

“I'll go see who they are,” Sword said, and with a hand on his sword hilt he marched down the slope.

He paused at the boundary shrine, knelt briefly, and said, “I thank you, spirits of my homeland, and pray that I may return safely to your protection.” Then he rose and stepped past, into the wilderness.

He could feel the change instantly as he left behind the familiar, accepting
ler
of his village and stepped into the territory of the wild
ler
that dwelt outside human bounds. The air seemed suddenly hot and hostile, rather than warm and comforting. The gentle breeze turned harsh. Weeds tore at his trousers.

Most people in Mad Oak would never have dared to set foot beyond the shrine without a guide and the protection of
ara
feathers, but Sword, as one of the Chosen, was immune to most magic. Wild
ler
might harass him, but were unlikely to do him any serious harm. Except for the bloodthirsty Mad Oak itself, up on the ridgetop to the southwest, he did not think anything near the village posed a real threat to him, and even that terrible old tree had failed to lure him in the one time he had gotten close to it. Putting his hand on the hilt of his sword had been enough to alert the
ler
that protected him and break the oak's spell.

He kept a hand on his sword's hilt, just in case, as he marched boldly down into the birch grove.

He did not have to go far; as soon as he passed the first line of undergrowth that bordered the grove he could see the strangers, fifty yards away among the birches. There were at least a dozen of them, all big men in matching attire. They wore broad-brimmed, cloth-covered helmets crowned with
ara
feathers, and despite the heat they were clad in thick quilted jackets and leggings striped with dense rows of
ara
feathers—jackets and leggings that showed signs of hard use, with hundreds of little slashes and tears, patches of mud and smears of green, thorns and briars everywhere. The feathers were crumpled and broken in many places.

Clearly, these men were not appeasing the wild
ler,
nor dodging them, as a guide might, but were simply bulling their way through, relying on their strange clothing to protect them from lashing branches, stabbing thorns, and the claws and teeth of small animals. Heavy leather gloves held sticks and shovels and machetes, and the men were hacking and digging their way through the undergrowth. The damage to their protective clothing made it clear that the undergrowth and its
ler
had not yielded without a fight.

Sword had never seen anything like this before, nor heard of such a
thing. The people of Barokan had always respected
ler,
always tried to cooperate with the spirits of the land and sky and forest. Every town and village had made accommodations with its own
ler,
usually through a priesthood that negotiated with them, and the land between the scattered communities had been left alone.

Until now. These men were clearly not leaving the wilderness alone.

Sword kept walking into the birch grove, watching the men intently. He didn't recognize any of them. None were from Mad Oak, nor were any of them guides he knew.

This whole scene was unspeakably bizarre. Whole gangs of men simply did not venture into the wilderness like this, and ordinarily
nobody
would tear up the natural landscape in such a brutal fashion, so utterly heedless of the
ler.
The normal thing to do would be to either try to slip through without disturbing the
ler,
or to appease them as best one could, but these men appeared to be deliberately antagonizing the wilderness spirits.

“Who
are
you?” Sword demanded, as soon as the strangers noticed his approach.

The slashing, chopping, and shoveling stopped as the entire party turned to look at him. “The Wizard Lord's road crew,” one of them called back. “Who are
you,
coming out here unguarded?”

“I'm called Sword,” Sword replied. “What do you mean, road crew?”

“Sword? The Swordsman? Really?” Several voices spoke at once, as the entire party lowered their tools and turned to stare.

“The Swordsman, yes.” Sword drew his weapon and let it hang loosely in his hand. “Now, who are you people, and what are you doing here?”

“He told you, we're a road crew,” a man called. He reached up and doffed his helmet, revealing sweat-matted hair and a long, half-healed slash across his forehead that seemed to indicate that at least one
ler
had put up resistance. “We're cutting a road through from Willowbank to Mad Oak.”

Sword blinked and lowered his blade further. “Cutting a road?”

“That's right. You don't have a guide for this route anymore, so we're cutting a road, and if it's properly maintained you won't
need
a guide, ever again.”

Sword struggled for a moment with this concept.

He knew that in the Midlands the towns were often so close together that they were connected by broad roads, wide enough for two carts to pass, where no guide was needed to protect travelers from the untamed
ler
of the wilderness; he had been there, and seen it for himself. But that was in the
Midlands,
where one town was only rarely separated from the next by more than a mile, and where the land between was as likely to be open grassland as forest. There were no open roads in Longvale, where a good ten miles of thick woods and marshland divided Mad Oak from Willowbank; there were only narrow, winding paths that required a skilled guide to navigate safely.

Or rather, there
had been
only narrow, dangerous paths until now. Looking past the self-proclaimed “road crew,” Sword could see that they had indeed cut a broad, straight path through the forest—a strip of bare, sun-dappled brown earth stretching away as far as he could see, with mounds of chopped greenery lining either side. He could smell the rich scent of fresh soil, an odor he associated with fields, rather than forests.

Bits of leaf fluttered about those side mounds in ways that had nothing to do with the faint breeze that found its way through the birches, and little glimmers of light and color moved through them where no sunlight could reach; the
ler
of the plants and other things that had been cleared away were obviously still active, and struggling to respond to the disruption of their home.

The road itself, though, seemed clear and untroubled. Sword pointed at it. “That goes all the way to Willowbank?”

“Indeed it does,” said the man who had first told him he faced a road crew, glancing proudly back over his shoulder. “Oh, it's not all as straight as that, as we had to route it around the bogs, but it's a good road. And before that we cut a road from Rock Bridge to Willowbank, and from Broadpool to Rock Bridge.”

“You did?”

“We did. And if the other crews have done their jobs, you can now walk from here all the way to Winterhome without a guide, so long as you stay on the road and wear a few feathers.”

That was more than Sword could comprehend all at once. “Winterhome?”

“Winterhome. That's where the Wizard Lord lives, after all.”

Sword nodded. “Of course,” he agreed.

He had heard that the current Wizard Lord had chosen Winterhome as his home. He had vaguely wondered why, since he knew the Wizard Lord was not a native of Winterhome, but he had not pursued the matter. After all, a Wizard Lord could live anywhere in Barokan that he chose; if the current one wanted to live at the foot of the Eastern Cliffs, in the town where the Uplanders wintered, that was his business, and none of Sword's concern.

But Winterhome had to be a hundred miles away. Could there really be a highway all the way there, through all that wilderness? He stared at the road.

After a moment's awkward silence, the apparent crew chief turned and called, “All right, now, we have work to do! We want this cut through to Mad Oak while it's still light—with luck we'll dance with the girls in the town's pavilion tonight!”

A murmur of agreement sounded. The men lifted their tools and resumed hacking at the underbrush, extending their road through the birch grove.

Sword shifted his gaze from the road vanishing into the forest to the hands swinging machetes and hoes. He stared for a moment, then turned without another word and headed back to town.

This was all strange and new, and he had no idea how to react to it, but it did not seem to call for hostility. The road crew was not breaking any laws, so far as he knew. It was not
customary
to disturb all those wild
ler,
but there was no formal stricture forbidding it. As long as the men stopped at the boundary shrine, and did nothing to upset the town's own
ler,
there was no obvious reason to interfere.

Besides, Sword had no real authority in Mad Oak; he wasn't a priest. He would go back and let the rest of the town decide what to do.

As he neared the boundary he could see a score of his townsfolk waiting for him just beyond the shrine—not just those who had been there before, but more. Elder and Younger Priestess had joined the
party, and looked unhappy; the sigils of office on their foreheads seemed to be pulsing and glowing red, rather than their usual pale and steady gold. Sword waved to them to indicate that all was well, but he was not actually sure that was true.

“What's happening?” Younger Priestess called. “The
ler
are upset!”

“They're building a road,” Sword called back. “All the way to . . . to Willowbank.”

The priestesses exchanged glances; then Elder called, “They're doing
what?”

“Building a road,” Sword repeated, though he was close enough to the border now that he no longer needed to shout. “They're clearing a path through the wilderness, so we won't need guides anymore.”

“Can they
do
that? What about all the
ler?”
Younger Priestess asked. Her hand reached up to rub at her forehead.

Sword shrugged. “The men don't appear to be having any real problems. A few cuts and scratches. They're wearing protective clothing and carrying
ara
feathers.”

“They
are
disturbing the
ler,
though,” Elder said. “Many, many
ler.
We can hear them.”

“And feel them,” Younger added.

Sword glanced over his shoulder at the flashing machetes and thumping shovels. “They don't seem to care.”

“Well, they don't need to live here!” Younger exclaimed. “Those are
our ler
 . . .”

“No,” Elder said thoughtfully. “They aren't.” She looked at Sword. “They'll stop at the border?”

“I assume so. One of them said something about dancing in our pavilion tonight. I don't think they mean
us
any harm, nor anything in Mad Oak.”

“They're disrupting many spirits, though—earth and leaf and tree. And those won't just quietly vanish.”

The light and movement in those mounds alongside the road had told Sword as much. “What
will
they do?” he asked, genuinely curious. “I've never heard of anything like this.”

The priestess frowned. “Well, they'll dissipate
eventually
—a
ler
like
that without a home, without a solid object to bind it to our world, fades away in time.”

“Not all
ler
are tied to objects, though,” Sword protested, looking down at the sword in his hand.

“The
ler
of the land are,” Elder said. “Any
ler
a priest can deal with is. The so-called higher
ler,
the abstract
ler,
they're the domain of wizards, not priests, and I doubt they're being disturbed by this. These men aren't defying wind or fire or strength or warmth or any of those, they're uprooting branch and stalk, and turning earth.”

“So the disturbed
ler
will dissipate . . .”

“Eventually. But until then they'll strike out in any way they can. They'll form into misshapen ghosts to strike at their attackers, they'll look for things they can possess, new homes they can claim.”

“But the men are protected,” Sword said. “They're wearing
ara
feathers, and good sturdy clothes.”

“Then they may be safe enough, but I won't walk that road they're building any time soon. And I think we may want to keep a close watch on the livestock and the children for the next few days, and be wary of bad dreams.” She looked Sword in the eye. “Did they say who began this? Whose idea it was, to battle the natural order in this way?”

“The Wizard Lord,” Sword said. “The Lord of Winterhome.”

“Ah,” Elder said. For a moment no one spoke; then she added, “Do you think you may need to kill him?”

The question was not as bizarre as it might seem, and Sword took it very seriously. The Wizard Lord was selected by the other wizards of Barokan, the so-called Council of Immortals, to rule over all the land from the Eastern Cliffs to the Western Isles, and was given great magical power to do so. The Wizard Lord controlled the weather, and had power over wind and fire, over disease, and over many of the beasts of the wilderness. He was empowered to serve as judge and executioner of any wizard who misbehaved, and any criminal who fled from the towns into the wild.

And as a check on the dangers of such great power, eight ordinary people were chosen to take up special roles and receive limited magical
powers of their own, and it was the duty of these eight to remove any Wizard Lord who proved himself unfit for his high office.

Sword, the Swordsman, was one of the Chosen. The silver talisman he always carried in his pocket bound him to the
ler
of muscle and steel and ensured that he was the world's greatest swordsman, unbeatable in single combat. In the past, when Wizard Lords had gone bad, it was usually the Swordsmen of the time who eventually slew them.