Still, he could feel himself growing older. He knew that he would have little chance in a fair fight, either with swords or unarmed, against almost anyone. He would not stay healthy forever.
When the time came that his health was irretrievably going, he promised himself, he would take decisive action to free himself from Wirikidor’s curse. There was always a way out; he had only to find it. He reminded himself of that resolve periodically from then on and even wrote it down, lest he forget. When the time came, six years later, that he could no longer deny that he was losing his sight, he made his decision.
He could put it off no longer. His vision was slowly deteriorating, and he was certain that in a year or two he would be blind. The thought of spending an eternity helpless in the dark was more than he could take, particularly when he realized that he would become a perpetual invalid, with no prospect of dying, and that Tandellin and his family would be forced to care for him indefinitely. He had heard — his hearing was still good — his patrons speak with scorn of old Azrad, who still clung to his life and his throne despite his eighty years of age and poor health. He did not care to engender similar scorn. Azrad could abdicate, if he so desired, and be taken care of in luxury for as long as he lived; Valder did not have that option. Tandellin and Sarai were not his family and had no obligation to stay on if he fell ill, but he was sure, nonetheless, that they would. They were far from young themselves, as evidenced by the recent birth of their second grandchild; where else would they go? They had lived their lives as his helpers at the inn; it was all they knew. If he became an invalid, they would have little choice but to tend him for as long as they could. He would not saddle them with a blind old fool who would live forever; that would be unforgivably unfair.
And if he were to reach a point where death became preferable to living on, how could he die, if he had grown too old and feeble to draw Wirikidor?
He saw only one course of action. He would take Wirikidor and go to the city. He would seek out a wizard there, or several wizards, and learn whether Wirikidor’s enchantment could be removed, allowing him to live out a normal life. Once that was done, finances permitting, he would also have his fading eyesight restored, so that he might live out his remaining years more pleasantly. He was ready and willing to pledge everything he owned toward the cost of such spells.
If the enchantment could not be broken, then he saw no option but suicide. He refused to live out all eternity as a blind, senile cripple. Blindness alone he might learn to live with, were he still young and healthy, but in time he knew his other faculties would go. He would have to kill himself with Wirikidor while he still had the strength to do so.
If Wirikidor would not kill him immediately, he knew he might have to kill however many other men it would take to use up the spell. That might be difficult, but he was sure he could manage it somehow.
With that firmly resolved, he made his plans and preparations. On the third day of the month of Greengrowth, in the year 5041, he set out for Ethshar of the Spices, riding as a paying passenger on an ox-drawn farm wagon, with Wirikidor on his hip.
CHAPTER 26
The wagon’s owner knew nothing about magicians of any sort and, in fact, expressed doubts as to the authenticity of most spells, so Valder thanked him politely and disembarked as soon as they reached Westgate Market. The guards at the gate were more helpful, but the directions they gave him to reach the Wizards’ Quarter were not as detailed as he had hoped. He was to follow High Street for half a league or so — he had forgotten the city was that big — and then turn right onto a diagonal cross-street, a big one called Arena Street, and follow it past the Arena itself and on into the Wizards’ Quarter, down toward Southgate. That sounded simple enough, but there were so very many cross-streets that he was not at all sure he would know the right one when he found it.
The guards had also strongly advised him against carrying his sword openly on his belt. The overlord did not approve of such martial displays, and some people took it upon themselves to enforce the old man’s whims, even though at the moment there was no valid decree in effect on the matter. Valder thanked them, but left Wirikidor where it was. He thought that the sword might discourage thieves who would otherwise be tempted to attack an old man with a fat purse. He had brought all his accumulated funds from forty-odd years as an innkeeper; magic, he knew, did not come cheap.
The crowds and dirt and noise were overwhelming at first, particularly as he was already weary from his long ride. Oxen were slow-moving beasts, and the farmer had been in no great hurry, so the trip had taken a day and a half. He had arrived at mid-afternoon of the second day, the fourth of Greengrowth, his back aching from toes to shoulders. He had not realized, sitting around the inn, just how much age had affected him.
Objectively, he knew at a glance that the crowds were nothing compared to the mobs that had overwhelmed the city when first he saw it, but he still found them daunting as he made his way along High Street, watching for the diagonal cross-street the guards had described.
He passed inns and taverns clustered around the gate-side market and assorted disreputable lodgings. He passed block after block of varied shops, built of stone and wood and brick, selling everything imaginable, from fishhooks to farm wagons and diamonds to dried dung — but very little magic, and none of the signboards boasted of wizardry or witchcraft. A passing stranger, when asked, told him that these shops made up the Old Merchants’ Quarter; there was also a New Merchants’ Quarter to the south. The Wizards’ Quarter was much further on.
He came to a broad diagonal avenue that he took at first for Arena Street, but it was angled in the opposite direction from what the guard had led him to expect, so once again he asked, this time inquiring of a shopkeeper dealing in fine fabrics. The shopkeeper explained that this avenue was Merchant Street and that Arena Street was further on, past the New City district.
Valder trudged on along High Street and found himself passing mansions. Some faced upon the street, their rich carvings and gleaming windows plain to be seen, while others were set back and hidden behind walls or fences. A few stood surrounded by gardens, and one boasted an elaborate aviary. The streets in this area were not crowded at all, and most of the people he did see were tradesmen; only rarely did he spot someone whose finery was in accord with the opulence of the buildings.
The fine houses stopped abruptly, replaced by a row of shops facing onto a diagonal avenue, and Valder knew he had found Arena Street. He paused in the intersection to look around.
Far off to his left, at the end of the surprisingly straight avenue, he could see the overlord’s palace. He had caught quick glimpses of it once or twice before on Merchant Street and again on one of the streets in the New City, but had not stopped to look at it.
That was where Azrad the Great lived, now more than eighty years old but still holding on to his absolute power as overlord of the city and triumvir of the Hegemony. He was said to suffer from bouts of idiocy, to have lost his teeth, and to drool like a baby in consequence. Valder shuddered at the thought. It was not that Azrad’s current condition was so very unpleasant, but that it had come upon him in a mere eighty years or so, while Wirikidor could perhaps keep Valder alive for eighty centuries.
And for that matter, how pleasant could Azrad’s life actually be? His elder son Azrad had died as a youth, in the waning days of the Great War. His wife was long dead. His surviving son, Kelder, was middle-aged and said to be a dreary sort. One grandson had died at the age of fourteen of some unidentified disease, and another was just coming of age. There were three granddaughters as well.