Free The Ninth Talisman by Lawrence Watt-Evans Page B

quickly to its feet and letting out an unhappy yip. Then it shivered and trotted away toward the kitchens, whimpering.
    The unnatural silence that had filled the room during the magical conversation suddenly burst into a murmur of hushed voices, and every eye in the room was focused on the Swordsman.
    Sword paid the observers no attention. He watched the dog go, to make sure there would be no last-moment afterthought, then turned and continued upstairs. It was useful to know that the Wizard Lord was taking an interest in him, he told himself. Useful, but as always, a bit disconcerting.
    It was the morning after, as he was raising his head after making his farewell prayer to the
ler
of Beggar’s Hill, that he looked up at the sun clearing the Eastern Cliffs. He had already taken a step past the boundary shrine onto the road, but now he stopped dead in his tracks.
    â€œWhat is
that
?” he asked, pointing.
    His host, Nicker, had escorted him to the border, as the town’s
ler
were wary of unaccompanied strangers. The innkeeper had started to turn back just short of the shrine, but upon hearing the traveler’s voice he paused. “What is what?” he asked.
    Sword pointed. “That,” he said.
    Nicker looked where the Chosen Swordsman was pointing.
    Something stood atop the cliffs far to the southeast, a broad structure of some sort. It did not appear particularly remarkable, though details could not be seen at so great a distance and with the morning sun behind it, but it was not the architecture that had caught Sword’s eye. It was the location.
    There
were
no permanent structures atop the cliffs. Everyone knew that. The Uplands were a vast windswept prairie, and the Uplanders who lived there most of the year were nomads who lived in tents as they followed the great flocks of
ara,
the gigantic flightless birds that provided them with meat, magic-resistant feathers, and the beaks and hollow bones they used to make their tools.
    The Uplanders did not build multistory buildings right at the cliff edge.
    â€œI don’t know,” Nicker said. “They started building it two or three years ago; I think it’s finished now.”
    â€œ
Who
built it? The Uplanders?”
    Nicker shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so. The rumoris that it’s another of the Wizard Lord’s projects. I’m pretty sure one of the road crew said it was.”
    â€œProjects? What sort of project is it?”
    â€œI don’t really know.”
    Sword did not like that. The Wizard Lord was the mystical overlord of all Barokan and could go anywhere in his realm that he pleased, but the land atop the cliffs was not part of Barokan. The cliffs were the eastern boundary, just as definite as the boundaries of the towns within Barokan. The Wizard Lord had no business doing anything in the Uplands, and certainly shouldn’t be
building
anything up there; that was intruding into the Uplanders’ territory. Building roads through the wilderness within Barokan was one thing—all Barokan was within the Wizard Lord’s purview—but building something in the Uplands?
    And who knew what the Wizard Lord might be building elsewhere in the Uplands, too far back from the cliff edge to be visible?
    â€œDid that road-builder say what it is? What it’s for?”
    â€œWell, he had a name for it,” Nicker said, glancing up at the cliff-top structure. “At least, my niece said he did.”
    â€œWhat was that? Did she say?”
    â€œShe said it’s called the Summer Palace.”
    Sword blinked at him, then turned to stare at the building atop the cliffs. “Summer Palace”—just what did that mean? Some Wizard Lords had built palaces and lived in them, probably more than hadn’t, but a
Summer
Palace?
    And surely the Wizard Lord couldn’t intend to
live
in it, to dwell outside Barokan!
    He definitely needed to speak to the