The sorceress stroked the beads at her throat. “He could test it. If it is true, he would know. Still, solemn debt though it may be, that doesn’t mean that the debt must be paid now.”
Abby leaned boldly toward the sorceress. “My mother said it is a debt true, and that it had to be paid. Please, Delora, you know the nature of such things. I was so confused when I met with him, with all those people shouting. I foolishly failed to press my case by asking that he test it.” She turned and clutched the Mother Confessor’s arm. “Please, help me? Tell him what I have and ask that he test it?”
The Mother Confessor considered behind a blank expression. At last she spoke. “This involves a debt bound in magic. Such a thing must be considered seriously. I will speak to Wizard Zorander on your behalf and request that you be given a private audience.”
Abby squeezed her eyes shut as tears sprang anew. “Thank you.” She put her face in both hands and began to weep with relief at the flame of hope rekindled.
The Mother Confessor gripped Abby’s shoulders. “I said I will try. He may deny my request.”
The sorceress snorted a humorless laugh. “Not likely. I will twist his ear, too. But Abigail, that does not mean that we can convince him to help you—bone or no bone.”
Abby wiped her cheek. “I understand. Thank you both. Thank you both for understanding.”
With a thumb, the sorceress wiped a tear from Abby’s chin. “It is said that the daughter of a sorceress is a daughter to all sorceresses.”
The Mother Confessor stood and smoothed her white dress. “Delora, perhaps you could take Abigail to a rooming house for women travelers. She should get some rest. Do you have money, child?”
“Yes, Mother Confessor.”
“Good. Delora will take you to a room for the night. Return to the Keep just before sunrise. We will meet you and let you know if we were able to convince Zedd to test your bone.”
“I will pray to the good spirits that Wizard Zorander will see me and help my daughter,” Abby felt sudden shame at her own words. “And I will pray, too, for his daughter.”
The Mother Confessor cupped Abby’s cheek. “Pray for all of us, child. Pray that Wizard Zorander unleashes the magic against D’Hara, before it is too late for all the children of the Midlands—old and young alike.”
O
n their walk down to the city, Delora kept the conversation from Abby’s worries and hopes, and what magic might contribute to either. In some ways, talking with the sorceress was reminiscent of talking with her mother. Sorceresses evaded talk of magic with one not gifted, daughter or not. Abby got the feeling that it was as uncomfortable for them as it had been for Abby when Jana asked how a mother came to have a child in her tummy.
Even though it was late, the streets were teeming with people. Worried gossip of the war floated to Abby’s ears from every direction. At one corner a knot of women murmured tearfully of menfolk gone for months with no word of their fate.
Delora took Abby down a market street and had her buy a small loaf of bread with meats and olives baked right inside. Abby wasn’t really hungry. The sorceress made her promise that she would eat. Not wanting to do anything to cause disfavor, Abby promised.
The rooming house was up a side street among tightly packed buildings. The racket of the market carried up the narrow street and flittered around buildings and through tiny courtyards with the ease of a chickadee through a dense wood. Abby wondered how people could stand
to live so close together and with nothing to see but other houses and people. She wondered, too, how she was going to be able to sleep with all the strange sounds and noise, but then, sleep had rarely come since she had left home, despite the dead-quiet nights in the countryside.
The sorceress bid Abby a good night, putting her in the hands of a sullen-looking woman of few words who led her to a room at the end of a long hall and left her to her night’s rest, after collecting a silver coin. Abby sat on the edge of the bed and, by the light of a single lamp sitting on a shelf by the bed, eyed the small room as she nibbled at the loaf of bread. The meat inside was tough and stringy, but had an agreeable flavor, spiced with salt and garlic.
Without a window, the room wasn’t as noisy as Abby had feared it might be. The door had no bolt, but the woman who kept the house had said in a mumble for her not to fret, that no men were allowed in the establishment. Abby set the bread aside and, at a basin atop a simple stand two strides across the room. washed her face. She was surprised at how dirty it left the water.
She twisted the lever stem on the lamp, lowering the wick as far as it would go without snuffing the flame; she didn’t like sleeping in the dark in a strange place. Lying in bed, staring up at the water-stained ceiling, she prayed earnestly to the good spirits, despite knowing that they would ignore a request such as she made. She closed her eyes and prayed for Wizard Zorander’s daughter, too. Her prayers were fragmented by intruding fears that felt as if they clawed her insides raw.
She didn’t know how long she had lain in the bed, wishing for sleep to take her, wishing for morning to come, when the door slowly squeaked open. A shadow climbed the far wall.
Abby froze, eyes wide, breath held tight, as she watched a crouched figure move toward the bed. It wasn’t the woman of the house. She would be taller. Abby’s fingers tightened on the scratchy blanket, thinking that maybe she could throw it over the intruder and then run for the door.
“Don’t be alarmed, dearie. I’ve just come to see if you had success up at the Keep.”
Abby gulped air and she sat up in the bed. “Mariska?” It was the old woman who had waited with her in the keep all day. “You frightened the wits out of me!”
The small flame from the lamp reflected in a sharp shimmer in the
woman’s eye as she surveyed Abby’s face. “Worse things to fear than your own safety.”
“What do you mean?”
Mariska smiled. It was not a reassuring smile. “Did you get what you wanted?”
“I saw the First Wizard, if that’s what you mean.”
“And what did he say, dearie?”
Abby swung her feet down off the bed. “That’s my business.”
The sly smile widened. “Oh, no, dearie, it’s our business.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Answer the question. You’ve not much time left. Your family has not much time left.”
Abby shot to her feet. “How do you—”
The old woman seized Abby’s wrist and twisted until Abby was forced to sit. “What say the First Wizard?”
“He said he couldn’t help me. Please, that hurts. Let me go.”
“Oh, dearie, that’s too bad, it is. Too bad for your little Jana.”
“How … how do you know about her? I never—”
“So, Wizard Zorander denied your petition. Such sad news.” She clicked her tongue. “Poor, unfortunate, little Jana. You were warned. You knew the price of failure.”
She released Abby’s wrist and turned away. Abby’s mind raced in hot panic as the woman shuffled toward the door.
“No! Please! I’m to see him again, tomorrow. At sunrise.”
Mariska peered back over her shoulder. “Why? Why would he agree to see you again, after he has denied you? Lying will buy your daughter no more time. It will buy her nothing.”
“It’s true. I swear it on my mother’s soul. I talked to the sorceress, the one who took us in. I talked to her and the Mother Confessor, after Wizard Zorander denied my petition. They agreed to convince him to give me a private audience.”
Her brow bunched. “Why would they do this?”
Abby pointed to her sack sitting on the end of the bed. “I showed them what I brought.”
With one gnarled finger, Mariska lifted open the sack. She looked for a moment and then glided closer to Abby.
“You have yet to show this to Wizard Zorander?”
“That’s right. They will get me an audience with him. I’m sure of it. Tomorrow, he will see me.”
From her bulky waist band, Mariska drew a knife. She waved it slowly back and forth before Abby’s face. “We grow weary of waiting for you.”
Abby licked her lips. “But I—”
“In the morning I leave for Coney Crossing. I leave to see your frightened little Jana.” Her hand slid behind Abby’s neck. Fingers like oak roots gripped Abby’s hair, holding her head fast. “If you bring him right behind me, she will go free, as you were promised.”
Abby couldn’t nod. “I will. I swear. I’ll convince him. He is bound by a debt.”
Mariska put the point of the knife so close to Abby’s eye that it brushed her eyelashes. Abby feared to blink.
“Arrive late, and I will stab my knife in little Jana’s eye. Stab it through. I will leave her the other so that she can watch as I cut out her father’s heart, just so that she will know how much it will hurt when I do her. Do you understand, dearie?”
Abby could only whine that she did, as tears streamed down her cheeks.
“There’s a good girl,” Mariska whispered from so close that Abby was forced to breathe the spicy stink of the woman’s sausage dinner. “If we even suspect any tricks, they will all die.”
“No tricks. I’ll hurry. I’ll bring him.”
Mariska kissed Abby’s forehead. “You’re a good mother.” She released Abby’s hair. “Jana loves you. She cries for you day and night.”
After Mariska closed the door, Abby curled into a trembling ball in the bed and wept against her knuckles.
D
elora leaned closer as they marched across the broad rampart. “Are you sure you’re all right, Abigail?”
Wind snatched at her hair, flicking it across her face. Brushing it from her eyes, Abby looked out at the sprawl of the city below beginning to coalesce out of the gloom. She had been saying a silent prayer to her mother’s spirit.
“Yes. I just had a bad night. I couldn’t sleep.”
The Mother Confessor’s shoulder pressed against Abby’s from the
other side. “We understand. At least he agreed to see you. Take heart in that. He’s a good man, he really is.”
“Thank you,” Abby whispered in shame. “Thank you both for helping me.”
The people waiting along the rampart—wizards, sorceresses, officers, and others—all momentarily fell silent and bowed toward the Mother Confessor as the three women passed. Among several people she recognized from the day before, Abby saw the wizard Thomas, grumbling to himself and looking hugely impatient and vexed as he shuffled through a handful of papers covered in what Abby recognized as magical symbols.
At the end of the rampart they came to the stone face of a round turret. A steep roof overhead protruded down low above a roundtopped door. The sorceress rapped on the door and opened it without waiting for a reply. She caught the twitch of Abby’s brow.
“He rarely hears the knock,” she explained in a hushed tone.
The stone room was small, but had a cozy feel to it. A round window to the right overlooked the city below, and another on the opposite side looked up on soaring walls of the Keep, the distant highest ones glowing pink in the first faint rays of dawn. An elaborate iron candelabrum held a small army of candles that provided a warm glow to the room.
Wizard Zorander, his unruly wavy brown hair hanging down around his face as he leaned on his hands, was absorbed in studying a book lying open on the table. The three women came to a halt.
“Wizard Zorander,” the sorceress announced, “we bring Abigail, born of Helsa.”
“Bags, woman,” the wizard grouched without looking up, “I heard your knock, as I always do.”
“Don’t you curse at me, Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander,” Delora grumbled back.
He ignored the sorceress, rubbing his smooth chin as he considered the book before him. “Welcome, Abigail.”
Abby’s fingers fumbled at the sack. But then she remembered herself and curtsied. “Thank you for seeing me, Wizard Zorander. It is of vital importance that I have your help. As I’ve already told you, the lives of innocent children are at stake.”
Wizard Zorander finally peered up. After appraising her a long moment he straightened. “Where does the line lie?”
Abby glanced to the sorceress on one side of her and then the Mother Confessor on the other side. Neither looked back.
“Excuse me, Wizard Zorander? The line?”
The wizard’s brow drew down. “You imply a higher value to a life because of a young age. The line, my dear child, across which the value of life becomes petty. Where is the line?”
“But a child—”
He held up a cautionary finger. “Do not think to play on my emotions by plying me with the value of the life of a child, as if a higher value can be placed on life because of age. When is life worth less? Where is the line? At what age? Who decides?
“All life is of value. Dead is dead, no matter the age. Don’t think to produce a suspension of my reason with a callous, calculated twisting of emotion, like some slippery officeholder stirring the passions of a mindless mob.”