[ 22 ]

“Wait!” Farash called, raising his hands. “Everyone, wait! I have an idea!”

Startled, Artil turned to look at his advisor. Puzzled, Sword stood, waiting, still slightly crouched. The soldiers stopped advancing; some glanced at Farash, some at their captain, while others kept their eyes on Sword.

Sword wondered just what Farash had in mind; did he think he could persuade the two of them into some sort of agreement? Surely, Farash knew that of all the people in the world, he was the only one Sword trusted even less than he trusted Artil.

It might just be a ploy to delay Sword until the other guards arrived, but even Farash deserved a chance to speak; after all, if Sword did kill Artil and survived, and the guards continued to fight, he intended to kill Farash next. The man had a right to say a few last words, if only to further condemn himself.

“Captain!” Farash said, holding out a hand to the guard’s commander, who happened to be the nearest of the soldiers. “Give me your sword!”

Artil threw Farash a final glance, then turned his attention back to Sword. “Give it to him,” he said without looking at the captain.

“My lord, I—,” the soldier began.

“Give it to him!” Artil interrupted. “I don’t know what his idea is, but I trust him—give him your sword.” He glanced sideways. “And you, give me that,” he said, snatching a spear from the hand of another soldier.

The captain still hesitated.

“Hurry up,” the Wizard Lord said. “His Uplander allies might be here at any moment.”

“As will more of your own men, my lord,” Farash said as the captain reluctantly handed over his sword, hilt-first. “Which is why I can wait no longer.” He hefted the sword, adjusted his grip—and then swung around and plunged his blade into the Wizard Lord’s back, thrusting it through him so that the point jabbed out of his belly.

Blood spurted. Artil’s eyes flew wide, his hands flew up, and he let out a dull croak; if he had meant it to be words, Sword had no idea what those words might have been. He released the spear he had just grabbed, and it rattled to the stony ground.

Sword stared in incomprehension. He could see it all very clearly, see the bloody point of the borrowed sword thrusting out of Artil’s chest, but his mind refused to accept what he saw.

And then, as Farash inith Kerra yanked the sword back out, Artil im Salthir crumpled, bending at the knees and waist, folding down and then sprawling to one side upon the rocky ground. Red blood poured from his pierced body, pooling beneath him.

As Sword and the stunned soldiers watched, Farash stepped forward and swung the sword like an ax, chopping through the Wizard Lord’s neck. The blow did not entirely sever his head, but did cut through the spine, leaving no possibility that Artil could still be alive—and incidentally, badly chipping the sword’s blade.

For a moment, no one else moved; everyone simply stared at the bleeding corpse, and the man standing over it holding a bloody sword.

Then Sword recovered from his astonishment and strode swiftly forward, brushing aside the unresisting men and weapons who blocked his path, until he stood a few feet from Farash. There he stopped, and raised his sword to the other man’s throat.

He did not understand what had just happened, but he intended to. The Wizard Lord was dead, and that was good—but Farash had done it, Farash the traitor, Farash, the monster who had so hideously abused his power as Leader of the Chosen. That could not be good, could it?

It had to be a trick, a trap of some sort, a deception.

A rush of anger swept through the Swordsman; killing Artil had been his duty! How dare Farash deprive him of it?

Then he recognized that as the insanity it was—Farash had very probably just saved Sword’s life. Farash had told Sword long ago that he wanted to make amends for the evil he had done; did he think this was the way to do it?

Was it a way to do it?

“Sir . . . ,” a guardsman began uncertainly.

The captain’s hand fell to his empty scabbard, then away. He stared at his own sword in another man’s hand, covered in his master’s blood. The Chosen Swordsman had paid no attention whatsoever to the fact that the man he was confronting was armed; in the torrent of emotion, it hadn’t seemed important.

Farash opened his hand and let the red blade dangle loosely. “Drop your weapons,” he ordered. “All of you.”

“Do as he says,” Sword barked.

The captain nodded, one hand raised.

Reluctantly, most of the soldiers complied, in spirit, if not literally—spears were lowered carefully to the ground, and swords were sheathed, rather than dropped. Two or three men stubbornly held on to their arms, but did not approach the Swordsman or their late master’s chief advisor.

Sword stared at Farash’s familiar, hateful face, trying to read his expression, but he could make nothing of it. The man was not smiling, or frowning; he simply looked tired.

And perhaps, just perhaps, he was somehow relieved?

“I suppose you think I’ll spare you now,” Sword said, pressing the tip of his blade against the skin of Farash’s throat.

“I don’t know what you’ll do,” Farash said. “I hope you’ll spare me.”

He met Sword’s gaze with no sign of fear.

“I assume you changed sides to encourage me in that?”

“No.”

Sword waited a few seconds, to see whether Farash would explain himself further, but no explanation was forthcoming.

“You knew I would triumph, I take it? You saw something I’ve missed, perhaps? Recognized the Thief among these men?” He gestured at the surrounding soldiers.

Farash shook his head. “To the best of my knowledge, the Thief is still in Winterhome. If all has gone according to plan, he’s in the Winter Palace at this very moment, trying to find a way to free Lore and your Leader from Artil’s dungeons.”

“You know that?” Sword asked sharply.

“I helped arrange it,” Farash said. “I didn’t change sides, Sword; I have been on your side since shortly after I gave up the role of Leader. If you will allow me, I will prove it.”

“How?”

Farash gestured toward his throat. “If you will allow me?”

Reluctantly, Sword lowered his blade.

Farash said, “Thank you.” Then he bent down and laid his bloody sword by the Wizard Lord’s corpse. Straightening, he displayed his empty hands. “I am unarmed, as you see—and you are a far better swordsman than me even without your magic, I’m sure.”

“I think so,” Sword agreed.

“Then trust me for just a moment.” He reached into his tunic and drew out a small round object—a coin. “This,” he said, holding it up, “is the Talisman of Treachery, which must be borne by the ninth Chosen Defender of Barokan, and no other.”

Sword recognized that it was, indeed, the mate to the coin that the Wizard Lord had shown him and called the Talisman of Trust. The bearer of this talisman, if it was genuine, was indeed the ninth of the Chosen. Sword blinked. “You?”

Farash nodded. “I, my friend and erstwhile companion, am the Chosen Traitor. So long as I carried this, and so long as the Wizard Lord carried the Talisman of Trust, and so long as we were within the borders of Barokan, he could not mistrust me. That was my magic. No matter what you told him, no matter what I had done, no matter what I did, the Wizard Lord could not believe me capable of betraying him.”

“But you did betray him,” a new voice said. Sword turned.

The captain who had given Farash his sword was speaking. “You betrayed and murdered him!”

“Well, of course I did,” Farash said. “He was a Dark Lord, and as one of the Chosen, under the oath I swore to the Council of Immortals, it was my duty to kill him.”

“But he was the Wizard Lord! He wasn’t a Dark Lord—he built the roads and canals, and slew the monsters and the evil wizards—”

“They weren’t evil,” Farash said, cutting him off. “They were just wizards. And he had them all killed for nothing—they were as bound by the Talisman of Treachery as he was, and could not reveal my identity or nature. He was demanding the impossible of them.”

“He was the Wizard Lord, sworn to protect Barokan from rogue wizards!”

Farash sighed. “They weren’t rogues. And the Chosen had done nothing to harm him, yet he took two of them prisoner and killed three of the others.”

“Three?” Sword asked. “You’re sure?”

Farash turned his attention back to the Swordsman. “Three,” he said. “He tracked poor Bow down months ago. The hunt was long and bloody—Artil must have lost at least twenty men before they finally caught up with Bow and butchered him.” He shook his head sadly. “I tried to distract him, get him to call off the pursuit, but I couldn’t do it.”

“Why didn’t you just kill him?” Sword demanded. “If he trusted you, and you were right there beside him all this time, why didn’t you simply borrow a sword and run him through, as you did just now?”

“I couldn’t,” Farash said. “Oh, believe me, I wanted to—I even tried, twice, to slip into his bedroom and cut his throat. But I couldn’t. Just as the magic would not let the Council identify me, or let the Wizard Lord mistrust me, it would not let me harm him when acting alone.” He grimaced. “Even though you never told the Council why you wanted me removed as Leader, they didn’t entirely trust me, Sword. They knew you must have had reasons for demanding I give up my role as Leader, so they put strong restrictions on me. None of my magic was ever under my own control; it was all bindings. And the binding on me was that I could not harm the Wizard Lord unless he was under attack by others of the Chosen. I had to be in the presence of another of the Chosen, and that other had to be trying to kill him, before I could act against him openly.”

“And this was your first opportunity? What about when he imprisoned Boss and Lore?”

“He was acting against them. They weren’t trying to kill him. They didn’t even defend themselves. And after that, poor Bow never got close enough; it wasn’t Artil who killed him, but a band of soldiers. Beauty never even tried to do anything but hide, so far as I could tell, and I don’t think Snatcher ever trusted me enough to make the attempt. I had hoped that after I began running messages to him from the prisoners he’d believe my story, but if he did, he never admitted it. No, Sword, my first chance was today, back in the palace. Perhaps I should have struck then and there, rather than fleeing here, but you caught me off guard, and there were so many of his soldiers there—”

“There are eight of them here,” Sword pointed out, waving at them.

“Eight of them, yes. There were thirty more back in the palace.”

“Captain?” a plaintive voice asked, interrupting their dialogue. “He killed the Wizard Lord; shouldn’t we do something?”

“Let them talk,” the captain replied. “I want to hear more. It’s not as if we can do anything for the Wizard Lord, or as if any of us are going anywhere. And look up there.” He pointed toward the head of the canyon, where the main body of soldiers had just now arrived. “I don’t think even the Chosen Swordsman can stand against all of us, here outside Barokan’s borders.”

Sword threw the new arrivals a glance. “Several of you would die finding out,” he said. “I think we would all prefer to avoid that.”

“Indeed,” the captain said. “But we may not have any other honorable choice.”

“Honorable?” Sword cast a glance at the Wizard Lord’s corpse. “There was little honor in any of this, on any side.”

No one disputed that.