Through the warm swirl of color, Zedd could hear Ann calling his name. It was a distant plea, even though she stood only a short distance away. In the flux of power atop his wizard’s rock, it might as well have come from another world.
In many ways, it did.
Her voice came again, irritating, insistent, urgent. Zedd all but ignored her as he lifted his arms into the rotating smoke of light. Shapes before him hinted at their spirit presence. He was almost through.
Abruptly, the wall of power began to collapse. The sleeves of his robes slipped down his arms as Zedd threw his contorted hands higher, trying to coerce more puissance into the field of magic, trying to stabilize it. He was madly hauling a bucket from the well, and finding it empty.
Sparkles of color fizzled. The twisting eddy of light degenerated into a muddy gloom of color. With gathering speed, it slumped, foundering impotently.
Zedd was dumbfounded.
With a thump that shook the ground, the whole elaborately forged warp in the world of existence extinguished.
Zedd’s arms windmilled as Ann snatched the back of his collar and yanked him from atop his wizard’s rock. He tumbled back, knocking them both to the ground.
Deprived of enlivening magic, the rock, too, collapsed. Zedd hadn’t done it; his wizard’s rock had reverted to its inert state of its own accord. Now he truly was baffled.
“
Bags, woman! What’s the meaning of this!”
“
Don’t you curse at me, you contrary old man. I don’t know why I bother trying to save your skinny hide.”
“
Why did you interfere? I was almost through!”
“
I didn’t interfere,” she growled.
“
But if it wasn’t you”—Zedd shot a glance at the dark hills. “You mean … ?”
“
I suddenly lost the link with my Han. I was trying to warn you, not stop you.”
“
Oh,” Zedd said in a thin voice. “That’s very different.” He stretched out and snatched up his wizard’s rock. “Why didn’t you say so?” He slipped the rock into an inner pocket.
Ann scanned the darkness. “Did you find out anything before you lost contact?”
“
I never made contact.”
Her gaze shot back at him. “You never … what do you mean, you never made contact? What were you doing all that time?”
“
Trying,” he said as he reached for a blanket. “Something was wrong. I couldn’t reach through. Get your things. We’d better get out of here.”
Ann scooped up a saddlebag and began stuffing their gear into it. “Zedd,” she said in a worried tone, “we were counting on this. Now that you have failed—”
“
I didn’t fail,” he snapped. “At least, it wasn’t my fault that it wasn’t working.”
She slapped his hands away when he pushed her toward her horse. “Why wouldn’t it work?”
“
The red moons.”
She twisted and stared at him. “You think …”
“
It’s not something I do often, or lightly. I’ve only made contact with the spirit world a handful of times in the whole of my life. My father warned me, when he gave me the rock, that it must only be used in the most dire of circumstances. Such contact risks letting the wrong spirits through, and worse, tearing the veil. When I had trouble making contact in the past, it was because of a disharmony. The red moons were a warning of disharmony, of a sort.”
“
We’re running out of things to try.” She yanked her arm from his grip. “What’s gotten into you?”
Zedd grunted. “What’s this you said about not being able to touch your Han?”
Ann stroked a hand along the flanks of her horse, letting it know she was close to its hindquarters. The horse pawed a front hoof as it whickered.
“
When you were up on your rock, I was casting sensing webs to make sure no one was near. This is the wilds, after all, and you were making quite a show with all the light. All of a sudden, when I reached to touch my Han again, it was like falling on my face.”
Zedd flicked his hand, casting a simple web to flip over a fist-sized rock lying at his feet. Nothing happened. It felt rather like trying to lean against something, and finding out too late that it wasn’t there. Like falling on his face.
Zedd reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a pinch of concealing dust. He cast it in the direction they had come. The breeze carried it away. It didn’t sparkle.
“
We’re in trouble,” he whispered.
She huddled close to him. “You wouldn’t mind being more specific, would you?”
“
Leave the horses.” He took her arm again. “Come on.”
This time she didn’t object as he took her arm and led her at a trot. “Zedd, what is it?” she whispered.
“
This is the wilds.” He stopped, lifted his nose, and sniffed the air. “My guess would be Nangtong.” He pointed in the dim moonlight. “Down here, in this ravine. We must do our best to stay out of sight. We may have to split up and try to escape in separate directions.”
Zedd held her arm, helping her as her feet slipped on the dewy grass and wet clay of the steep sides.
“
Who are the Nangtong?”
Zedd reached the bottom first. He put his hands on her wide waist and helped her down. Her legs were short, and she didn’t have the reach with them that he had with his. Without the aid of magic, her weight almost toppled him. With a hand, she caught a tangled mat of bur bush roots to steady herself.
“
The Nangtong,” Zedd whispered, “are a people of the wilds. They have magic of their own. They can’t exactly use their magic for anything, the way we use it, but it leaches the strength right out of other magic. Like rain on a campfire.
“
That’s the trouble with the wilds. There are any number of people in the wilds who cause odd things to go wrong with your attempts to use magic. There are creatures and places here, too, that are trouble in ways you don’t expect. It’s best to stay clear of the wilds.
“
That’s why I was so perturbed when after Nathan said we had to go to the Jocopo Treasure, Verna told us that the Jocopo used to live somewhere in the wilds. Nathan might as well have told us to reach into a roaring fire and pull out a hot coal. There are hazards everywhere in the wilds; the Nangtong are only one of them.”
“
So what makes you think it’s these Nangtong people who are causing the trouble with our magic?”
“
With most peoples of the wilds who have this effect, it steals the strength out of our magic, but my concealing dust would still have worked. It doesn’t. The Nangtong are the only ones I know of who can do that.”
Ann held her arms out to the sides to help balance herself and keep her footing as she crossed behind him on a fallen log. The moon slipped behind the clouds. The return of darkness pleased Zedd, because it helped hide them, but it made it nearly impossible to see where to step. They would be no less dead if they fell and broke their necks than if they were run through with a poison arrow or spear point.
“
Maybe we could show them that we’re friendly,” Ann whispered from behind him. She nabbed his robes so she could follow in the dark as he hurried along the flat beside the stream. “You’re always boasting and telling me to let you do the talking, as if you have a magic, honeyed tongue, to hear you tell it. Why don’t you simply tell these Nangtong that we’re looking for the Jocopo, and we would appreciate their help? Many people who would seem to be trouble turn out to be reasonable if you only talk with them.”
He turned his head back so he could keep his voice low and she would still be able to hear him. “I agree, but I don’t speak their language, so I can’t win them over.”
“
If these people are so dangerous, and you know it, then why would you be so foolish as to take us right into them?”
“
I didn’t. I skirted their lands by a wide margin.”
“
So you say. It would appear you’ve gotten us lost.”
“
No, the Nangtong are seminomadic. They have no exact, permanent home, but they stay within their own homelands. I stayed out of their homelands. It’s probably a spirit raiding party.”
“
A what?”
Zedd halted and crouched low, studying the lay of the land. He couldn’t see anyone in the faint light, and he could only vaguely detect the foreign smell of sweat. It could be that it had been carried on the breeze for miles.
“
A spirit raiding party,” he said as he put his mouth close to her ear. “It’s a long story, but the ending is that they offer sacrifices to the spirit world.
“
It is their belief that the newly departed spirit will carry the Nangtongs’ respects and requests to their departed ancestors, and in return the spirits will look kindly upon them. The hunting parties hunt things to sacrifice.”
“
People?”
“
Sometimes. If they can get away with it. They aren’t very brave when they encounter strong opposition—they would rather run than have a fight—but they will gladly pick off the weak or defenseless.”
“
In the name of Creation, what kind of place is this Midlands, letting people get away with such things? I thought you people were more civilized than that. I thought you had this alliance through which everyone in the Midlands cooperated and saw to the common good.”
“
The Confessors come here, to try to insure the Nangtong don’t murder people, but it’s a remote place. The Nangtong are always servile when a Confessor comes; her magic is one of the few not altered by the Nangtongs’ power. It could be that because a Confessor’s power has an element of the Subtractive to it, it isn’t altered.”
“
Why would you fools leave these people to their own devices, if you know what they are capable of?”
Zedd scowled at her in the darkness. “Part of the reason for the Midlands alliance was to protect those with magic who would be slaughtered by stronger lands.”
“
They don’t have magic. You said they couldn’t do anything with magic.”
“
Since they can nullify magic, make it impotent, then that means that they have magic. Those without magic could not do such a thing. It’s part of the way these people defend themselves. It’s their teeth, so to speak, used to defend themselves against those with powerful magic who would subjugate or destroy them.
“
We leave alone people and creatures with magic. They have as much right to exist as we, but we try to insure that they don’t murder innocent people. We may not like all forms of magic, but we don’t believe in exterminating the Creator’s beings to make a world in the image of those with the most power.”
She remained silent, so he went on. “There are creatures that can be dangerous, such as a gar, we don’t go out and kill all the gars. Instead, we leave them be, let them have their own lives, the way the Creator intended. It is not up to us to judge the wisdom of Creation.
“
The Nangtong diffident when challenged by strength, but deadly when they think they have the upper hand. They’re a kind of scavenger—like vultures, or wolves, or bears. It wouldn’t be right to eliminate those creatures. They have a part to play in the world.”
She put her face close so she could express her displeasure without yelling. “And what part do the Nangtong play?”
“
Ann, I am not the Creator, nor do I have conversations with Him to discuss His choices in creating life and magic. But I am respectful enough to allow that He may have a reason, and it isn’t my place to say He is wrong. That would be naked arrogance.
“
In the Midlands, we allow all forms of Creation to exist, and if it’s dangerous, we simply keep away from it. You, of all people, with your dogmatic teachings of your version of the Creator, should be able to sympathize with this view.”
Ann’s words, whispered though they were, became heated. “Our duty is to teach heathens such as this to respect the Creator’s other beings.”
“
Tell that to the wolf, or the bear.”
Her growl could have been either.
“
Sorceresses and wizards are meant to be custodians of magic, to protect it, just as a parent protects a child,” Zedd said. “It is not up to us to decide which are good enough to have a right to exist, which is worthy of life.
“
Down that path lies Jagang’s view of all magic. He thinks we are dangerous, and that we should be eliminated for the good of all. You seem to be siding with the emperor.”
“
If a bee stings you, do you not swat it?”
“
I didn’t say we shouldn’t defend ourselves.”
“
Then why haven’t you defended yourselves and eliminated such threats? In the war with Darken Rahl’s father, Panis, your own people called you the wind of death. You knew how to eliminate a threat then.”
“
I did what I had to do to protect innocent people who would have been slaughtered—who were being slaughtered. I will do the same against Jagang if I must. The Nangtong haven’t warranted annihilation; they don’t try to rule others through murder, torture, and enslavement. Their beliefs result in harm only if we are careless enough to intrude.”
“
They’re dangerous. You should never have let the threat continue.”
He shook a finger at her. “And why haven’t you killed Nathan, to eliminate the threat he represents?”
“
Would you equate Nathan with those who sacrifice people for heathen beliefs? And I can tell you that when I get my hands on Nathan again, I will set him on the right path!”