Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 Read Online Free PDF Page A

to bring him down. They chose a
few ordinary people and granted them magical abilities that the evil Lord could
not counter, and these Chosen Heroes were able to confront and slay the Wizard
Lord, though most of them died in the process. And when it was all over, a new
Wizard Lord was chosen—but the surviving heroes also found successors, for
themselves and their slain comrades, and let it be known that henceforth any
Wizard Lord who violated the trust of the people of Barokan would be slain, as
the third one, now called the Dark Lord of the Midlands, was.
    "Nonetheless,
every so often a Wizard Lord has thought he found a way to defeat the Chosen,
or was simply overcome by madness or evil, so that three more times the Chosen
had to leave their ordinary lives and find their way into the Wizar d Lord's stronghold,
wherever it might be, and kill the corrupt ruler. The most recent was a little
over a hundred years ago, when the Dark Lord of Goln Vleys was defeated, and
the eight Chosen—the Swordsman, the Beauty, the Leader, the Scholar, the Thief,
the Seer, and ... I don't remember
the others just now."
    "The Archer and the Speaker."
    "Oh, that's right. Anyway, the eight are
still Chosen, but don't really need to do anything but stand ready, since our
modern Wizard Lords are good, well-chosen rulers—"
    "Well, that's what we always hope for,
certainly."
    "I don't know of any Council of
Immortals, though."
    "Oh, but you do! You mentioned us. You
just don't know the name."
    Breaker frowned. "What are you talking
about?" he asked.
    "The group of wizards who set up the
Wizard Lords in the first place. That's us, the Council of Immortals."
    Breaker stared at her for a
moment. "Are you claiming to be six hundred years old?" he said. He
knew priests and wizards could do amazing things, but he was not sure whether
he was willing to believe that—she was obviously elderly, but six hundred years?
    "No, no," she
said. "We aren't literally immortals. And I certainly wasn't
born until centuries after the first Wizard Lord was appointed. But the group
of wizards that set hi m up in power, and that created the Chosen, didn't disband; they
admitted new members as the old died off, including any Wizard Lord who retired
honorably, and continued on, keeping an eye on matters from behind the scenes.
It's the Council of Immortals that chooses each new Wizard Lord, and that picks
the Chosen, and sometimes it's the Council of Immortals that tells the Chosen
when the time has come to remove a Wizard Lord who has become a danger and refused
to resign willingly. You see?"
    Breaker thought about that for a
moment, then said, "So the Wizard Lord does not actually rule Barokan?
He's merely a figurehead for this council?"
    "No, no, no," the
wizard said, shaking her head vigorously. "We don't rule anything; the
Wizard Lord does. He has the magi c, the eight Great Talismans. He controls the
weather and the wild beasts. He has the authority to hunt down and kill rogue
wizards—any wizard who disturbs the peace, even if he's a member of the
Council. All we do is choose who will be given the power, and decide if and
when it must be removed. And giving the command to the Chosen, as we have just
a handful of times over the past seven hundred years, requires a nearly
unanimous vote—if just three of us believe the Wizard Lord's misbehavior does
not require his death, then the Chosen are not called."
    "But you could decide to remove him
at any time."
    "Well ... yes."
    "So you really have the final
authority."
    "Collectively, I suppose we do. But we
don't use it."
    Breaker considered that for a long moment,
then asked, "Why not? Why bother with this system of controlling the
Wizard Lord? Why doesn't the Council rule directly?"
    The wizard grimaced. "We don't control
him. I just told you that."
    "You have the power to kill him
..."
    "Only if we almost all agree! And
believe me, lad, we don't often agree on anything."
    "But why did you—or your