The Ninth Talisman Read Online Free PDF Page A

listening.
    He thought at first it might just be an echo of someone speaking up in the pavilion, that rambling ridgetop structure that served as the village’s communal storehouse and gathering place, but the direction was wrong even for an echo. In all the years he had lived here, all the hundreds of times he had walked this path, he had never before encountered such an auditory illusion.
    Then he thought he might be imagining it, or hearing spirit voices rather than anything physical, but no, he could definitely hear something happening far ahead, off to the left, in the trees—not in the pavilion or anywhere else in the village lands, but in the trees beyond the edge of town. It wasn’t birds, he was sure, nor squirrels chittering. There were several voices speaking, real ones, human ones, and much rustling and thrashing.
    He frowned, wondering what
that
was about. There weren’t any homes or fields down that way; the town of Mad Oak ended at the boundary shrine a hundred yards ahead, and the sounds were coming from somewhere well beyond that, in the wilderness.
    The voices were human and male, but he had no idea what men would be doing out there. The old path to Willowbank ran through that general area, but no one used it anymore, not since the guide had retired. Even when the Willowbank Guide had been working, no one would have been thrashing about like that. The local
ler,
the spirits of that particular bit of forest, were not likely to appreciate such a disturbance.
Ler
that had made their accommodation with humanity would tolerate it, and a man could generally rattle about in town without worryingabout angering the spirit of each branch he brushed aside, or each blade of grass he trod upon, but out in the wild beyond the border the spirits were not so forgiving. Anyone venturing out there was likely to find thorns embedding themselves in his legs, branches lashing at his eyes, and the entire natural world in general trying to kill him.
    So who was making all that noise?
    Sword looked down at the jug in his hand, and at his empty belt. If he had been wearing his sword he might have decided to investigate, but he had just been going up to Brewer’s storeroom under the pavilion to fetch a gallon of beer. He hadn’t seen any reason to go armed. He had his silver talisman in his pocket, as he always did, but had not his sword, nor any
ara
feathers to ward off hostile magic; he could almost certainly survive a little jaunt into the wilderness, but it might be unpleasant.
    â€œWhat’s happening?” someone asked from behind him. “Sword, do you know?”
    â€œNo,” Sword replied. “I don’t think it’s anything to do with me.” He turned to discover that half a dozen townsfolk had heard the commotion as he had, and had emerged from their homes to peer into the underbrush beyond the boundary, trying to make out what was going on.
    â€œThey’re coming closer.” Sword knew the woman who said that as Curly.
    â€œYes, they are,” he agreed. He realized that the others were all watching him expectantly, and he sighed. He knew that they thought that exploring this phenomenon was somehow his responsibility.
    Being one of the Chosen, the eight magical defenders of Barokan, was not supposed to mean that he had to check out every potentially dangerous oddity that might happen along, but convincing his fellow townsfolk of that seemed to be impossible. They seemed to feel that if they had a hero living among them, they were entitled to see heroics.
    â€œI’ll get my sword,” he said. He resisted the temptation to say anything about the beer; after all, he could fetch that any time.
    He turned and trotted back through the village to the little house he shared with his mother and younger sisters, where he set the still-empty jug on the kitchen table and fetched his sword belt from the peg by the door. He buckled it in place, making sure the blade was