Abby was struck speechless by such an admonition. The wizard turned his attention to the Mother Confessor.
“Speaking of bureaucrats, what did the council have to say for themselves?”
The Mother Confessor clasped her hands and sighed. “I told them your words. Simply put, they didn’t care. They want it done.”
He grunted his discontent. “Do they, now?” His hazel eyes turned to Abby. “Seems the council doesn’t care about the lives of even children, when the children are D’Haran.” He wiped a hand across his tired-looking eyes. “I can’t say I don’t comprehend their reasoning, or that I disagree with them, but dear spirits, they are not the ones to do it. It is not by their hand. It will be by mine.”
“I understand, Zedd,” the Mother Confessor murmured.
Once again he seemed to notice Abby standing before him. He considered her as if pondering some profound notion. It made her fidget. He held out his hand and waggled his fingers. “Let me see it, then.”
Abby stepped closer to the table as she reached in her sack.
“If you cannot be persuaded to help innocent people, then maybe this will mean something more to you.”
She drew her mother’s skull from the sack and placed it in the wizard’s upturned palm. “It is a debt of bones. I declare it due.”
One eyebrow lifted. “It is customary to bring only a tiny fragment of bone, child.”
Abby felt her face flush. “I didn’t know,” she stammered. “I wanted to be sure there was enough to test … to be sure you would believe me.”
He smoothed a gentle hand over the top of the skull. “A piece smaller than a grain of sand is enough.” He watched Abby’s eyes. “Didn’t your mother tell you?”
Abby shook her head. “She said only that it was a debt passed to you from your father. She said the debt must be paid if it was called due.”
“Indeed it must,” he whispered.
Even as he spoke, his hand was gliding back and forth over the skull. The bone was dull and stained by the dirt from which Abby had pulled it, not at all the pristine white she had fancied it would be. It had horrified her to have to uncover her mother’s bones, but the alternative horrified her more.
Beneath the wizard’s fingers, the bone of the skull began to glow with soft amber light. Abby’s breathing nearly stilled when the air hummed, as if the spirits themselves whispered to the wizard. The sorceress fussed with the beads at her neck. The Mother Confessor chewed her lower lip. Abby prayed.
Wizard Zorander set the skull on the table and turned his back on them. The amber glow faded away.
When he said nothing, Abby spoke into the thick silence. “Well? Are you satisfied? Did your test prove it a debt true?”
“Oh yes,” he said quietly without turning toward them. “It is a debt of bones true, bound by the magic invoked until the debt is paid.”
Abby’s fingers worried at the frayed edge of her sack. “I told you. My mother wouldn’t have lied to me. She told me that if not paid while she was alive, it became a debt of bones upon her death.”
The wizard slowly rounded to face her. “And did she tell you anything of the engendering of the debt?”
“No.” Abby cast a furtive, sidelong glance at Delora before going on. “Sorceresses hold secrets close, and reveal only that which serves their purposes.”
With a slight, fleeting smile, he grunted his concurrence.
“She said only that it was your father and she who were bound in it, and that until paid it would continue to pass on to the descendants of each.”
“Your mother spoke the truth. But that does not mean that it must be paid now.”
“It is a solemn debt of bones.” Abby’s frustration and fear erupted with venom. “I declare it due! You will yield to the obligation!”
Both the sorceress and the Mother Confessor gazed off at the walls, uneasy at a woman, an ungifted woman, raising her voice to the First Wizard himself. Abby suddenly wondered if she might be struck dead for such insolence. But if he didn’t help her, it wouldn’t matter.
The Mother Confessor diverted the possible results of Abby’s outburst with a question. “Zedd, did your reading tell you of the nature of the engendering of the debt?”
“Indeed it did,” he said. “My father, too, told me of a debt. My test has proven to me that this is the one of which he spoke, and that the woman standing before me carries the other half of the link.”
“So, what was the engendering?” the sorceress asked.
He turned his palms up. “It seems to have slipped my mind. I’m sorry; I find myself to be more forgetful than usual of late.”
Delora sniffed. “And you dare to call sorceresses taciturn?”
Wizard Zorander silently considered her a moment and then turned a squint on the Mother Confessor. “The council wants it done, do they?” He smiled a sly smile. “Then it shall be done.”
The Mother Confessor cocked her head. “Zedd … are you sure about this?”
“About what?” Abby asked. “Are you going to honor the debt or not?”
The wizard shrugged. “You have declared the debt due.” He plucked a small book from the table and slipped it into a pocket in his robe. “Who am I to argue?”
“Dear spirits,” the Mother Confessor whispered to herself. “Zedd, just because the council—”
“I am just a wizard,” he said, cutting her off, “serving the wants and wishes of the people.”
“But if you travel to this place you would be exposing yourself to needless danger.”
“I must be near the border—or it will claim parts of the Midlands, too. Coney Crossing is as good a place as any other to ignite the conflagration.”
Beside herself with relief, Abby was hardly hearing anything else he said. “Thank you, Wizard Zorander. Thank you.”
He strode around the table and gripped her shoulder with sticklike fingers of surprising strength.
“We are bound, you and I, in a debt of bones. Our life paths have intersected.” His smile looked at once sad and sincere. His powerful fingers closed around her wrist, around her bracelet, and he put her mother’s skull in her hands. “Please, Abby, call me Zedd.”
Near tears, she nodded. “Thank you, Zedd.”
Outside, in the early light, they were accosted by the waiting crowd. Wizard Thomas, waving his papers, shoved his way through.
“Zorander! I’ve been studying these elements you’ve provided. I have to talk to you.”
“Talk, then,” the First Wizard said as he marched by. The crowd followed in his wake.
“This is madness.”
“I never said it wasn’t.”
Wizard Thomas shook the papers as if for proof. “You can’t do this, Zorander!”
“The council has decided that it is to be done. The war must be ended while we have the upper hand and before Panis Rahl comes up with something we won’t be able to counter.”
“No, I mean I’ve studied this thing, and you won’t be able to do it. We don’t understand the power those wizards wielded. I’ve looked over the elements you’ve shown me. Even trying to invoke such a thing will create intense heat.”
Zedd halted and put his face close to Thomas. He lifted his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Really, Thomas? Do you think? Igniting a light spell that will rip the fabric of the world of life might cause an instability in the elements of the web field?”
Thomas charged after as Zedd stormed off. “Zorander! You won’t be able to control it! If you were able to invoke it—and I’m not saying I believe you can—you would breach the Grace. The invocation uses heat. The breach feeds it. You won’t be able to control the cascade. No one can do such a thing!”
“I can do it,” the First Wizard muttered.
Thomas shook the fists of papers in a fury. “Zorander, your arrogance will be the end of us all! Once parted, the veil will be rent and
all life will be consumed. I demand to see the book in which you found this spell. I demand to see it myself. The whole thing, not just parts of it!”
The First Wizard paused and lifted a finger. “Thomas, if you were meant to see the book, then you would be First Wizard and have access to the First Wizard’s private enclave. But you are not, and you don’t.”
Thomas’s face glowed scarlet above his white beard. “This is a foolhardy act of desperation!”
Wizard Zorander flicked the finger. The papers flew from the old wizard’s hand and swirled up into a whirlwind, there to ignite, flaring into ashes that lifted away on the wind.
“Sometimes, Thomas, all that is left to you is an act of desperation. I am First Wizard, and I will do as I must. That is the end of it. I will hear no more.” He turned and snatched the sleeve of an officer. “Alert the lancers. Gather all the cavalry available. We ride for Pendisan Reach at once.”
The man thumped a quick salute to his chest before dashing off. Another officer, older and looking to be of much higher rank, cleared his throat.
“Wizard Zorander, may I know of your plan?”
“It is Anargo,” the First Wizard said, “who is the right hand of Panis Rahl, and in conjunction with Rahl conjures death to stalk us. Quite simply put, I intend to send death back at them.”
“By leading the lancers into Pendisan Reach?”
“Yes. Anargo holds at Coney Crossing. We have General Brainard driving north toward Pendisan Reach, General Sanderson sweeping south to join with him, and Mardale charging up from the southwest. We will go in there with the lancers and whoever of the rest of them is able to join with us.”
“Anargo is no fool. We don’t know how many other wizards and gifted he has with him, but we know what they’re capable of. They’ve bled us time and time again. At last we have dealt them a blow.” The officer chose his words carefully. “Why do you think they wait? Why wouldn’t they simply slip back into D’Hara?”
Zedd rested a hand on the crenellated wall and gazed out on the dawn, out on the city below.
“Anargo relishes the game. He performs it with high drama; he wants us to think them wounded. Pendisan Reach is the only terrain
in all those mountains that an army can get through with any speed. Coney Crossing provides a wide field for battle, but not wide enough to let us maneuver easily, or flank them. He is trying to bait us in.”
The officer didn’t seem surprised. “But why?”
Zedd looked back over his shoulder at the officer. “Obviously, he believes that in such terrain he can defeat us. I believe otherwise. He knows that we can’t allow the menace to remain there, and he knows our plans. He thinks to draw me in, kill me, and end the threat I alone hold over them.”
“So …” the officer reasoned aloud, “you are saying that for Anargo, it is worth the risk.”
Zedd stared out once more at the city below the Wizard’s Keep. “If Anargo is right, he could win it all at Coney Crossing. When he has finished me, he will turn his gifted loose, slaughter the bulk of our forces all in one place, and then, virtually unopposed, cut out the heart of the Midlands: Aydindril.
“Anargo plans that before the snow flies, he will have killed me, annihilated our joint forces, have the people of the Midlands in chains, and be able to hand the whip to Panis Rahl.”
The officer stared, dumbfounded. “And you plan to do as Anargo is hoping and go in there to face him?”
Zedd shrugged. “What choice have I?”
“And do you at least know how Anargo plans to kill you, so that we might take precautions? Take countermeasures?”
“I’m afraid not.” Vexed, he waved his hand, dismissing the matter. He turned to Abby. “The lancers have swift horses. We will ride hard. We will be to your home soon—we will be there in time—and then we’ll see to our business.”
Abby only nodded. She couldn’t put into words the relief of her petition granted, nor could she express the shame she felt to have her prayer answered. But most of all, she couldn’t utter a word of her horror at what she was doing, for she knew the D’Harans’ plan.
F
lies swarmed around dried scraps of viscera, all that was left of Abby’s prized bearded pigs. Apparently, even the breeding stock, which Abby’s parents had given her as a wedding gift, had been slaughtered and taken.
Abby’s parents, too, had chosen Abby’s husband. Abby had never
met him before: he came from the town of Lynford, where her mother and father bought the pigs. Abby had been beside herself with anxiety over who her parents would choose for her husband. She had hoped for a man who would be of good cheer—a man to bring a smile to the difficulties of life.
When she first saw Philip, she thought he must be the most serious man in all the world. His young face looked to her as if it had never once smiled. That first night after meeting him, she had cried herself to sleep over thoughts of sharing her life with so solemn a man. She thought her life caught up on the sharp tines of grim fate.
Abby came to find that Philip was a hardworking man who looked out at life through a great grin. That first day she had seen him, she only later learned, he had been putting on his most sober face so that his new family would not think him a slacker unworthy of their daughter. In a short time, Abby had come to know that Philip was a man upon whom she could depend. By the time Jana had been born, she had come to love him.