He threw his hands up in the air. "According to you, it would seem, knowledge is of no use, only youth."
"Now you are being foolish, old man. You know what I mean."
Zedd stepped back to the table and gave a shrug of his bony shoulders. "If you just sit here in this house instead of helping with what you know, then you might as well be the thing you fear most: an agent of the Keeper."
He put his knuckles to the table and glowered as he leaned over her. "If you don't fight him, then you help him. That is what his plan has been all along. Not to turn you to him, but to make you fear stopping him."
She looked into his eyes, uneasiness stealing into her expression. "What do you mean?"
"He has already done all he needed, Adie. He made you afraid of yourself. The Keeper has an eternity of patience. He doesn't need you to work for him. It takes effort to turn one with the gift. You weren't worth the trouble. He needed only for you not to work against him. He did all that was necessary. He didn't waste an effort to do more.
"In some ways he is as blind to this world as we are to his. He has only so much influence here; he must choose his tasks carefully. He doesn't spend what power he has here frivolously."
Realization took the place of unease. "Perhaps you not be such an old fool."
Zedd smiled as he pulled the chair forward and sat. "That has always been my opinion."
Hands nestled in her lap, Adie studied the table top as if hoping it would come to her aid. The house was silent, except for the slow crackle of the fire in the hearth. "All these years, the truth be hiding right under my nose." She lifted her head, giving him a puzzled frown. "How did you come to be so wise?"
Zedd shrugged. "But one of the advantages of having lived so long. You view yourself as just an old woman. I see a striking, dear lady, who has learned much in her time in this world, and has gained wisdom from what she has seen."
He pulled the yellow rose from her hair and held it before her. "Your loveliness is not a mask, layered over a rotten core. It blossoms from the beauty inside."
She lifted the flower from his fingers and laid it on the table. "Your clever tongue cannot cover the fact that I have wasted my life..."
Zedd shook his head, cutting her off. "No. You have wasted nothing. You simply have not seen the other side of things yet. In magic, in all things, there is a balance if we look for it. The Keeper did as he did, sending a Baneling to you, to keep you from interfering in his work, and to plant a seed of doubt in you that would perhaps turn you to him one day.
"But in that too, there was something to balance what he did. You came here to learn about the world of the dead in order to contact your Pell. Don't you see, Adie? You were manipulated to prevent you from interfering with the Keeper's plans, but in so doing, the balance is that you have learned things that might be of aid in stopping him. You must not surrender to what he had done to you; you must strike back with what he has inadvertently given you."
Her eyes glistened as she cast her gaze about her house, looking to the bone pile, the walls covered with talismans of the dead she had collected over the years, and to the shelves holding more yet. "But my oath... my Pell. I must reach him, tell him. He died thinking I betrayed him. If I cannot redeem myself in his eyes, then I be lost, my heart be lost. If I be lost, then the Keeper will find me."
"Pell is dead, Adie. Gone. The boundary, the pass, is gone. You would know better than I if it would have ever been any use in what you wanted, but in all these years, you have not found a way to make it so. If you wish to continue the pursuit of your oath, you will find no help here. Perhaps in Aydindril, you will.
"Helping to stop the Keeper does not mean you must break your oath to yourself. If my knowledge and help can be of any aid in what you seek, I offer it gladly. Just as you know things I do not, I know things you don't. I am, after all, the First Wizard. Perhaps what I know will help you. Pell would not want you to bring him your message that you did not betray him, if it meant you must betray everyone else."
Adie picked up the yellow flower, twirling it between her finger and thumb a moment before setting it down again. Gripping the edge of the table, she pushed herself to her feet. She stood a moment, and then lifted her head to gaze with her white eyes around the room once more.
Smoothing her robes at her hips, as if to make herself presentable, she limped around the table to stand behind his chair. Zedd felt her hands rest on his shoulders. Unexpectedly, she leaned over and kissed the top of his head and smoothed his unruly hair with gentle fingers. Zedd was relieved the fingers hadn't gone around his throat. He thought they might, after some of the things he had said.
"Thank you, my friend, for hearing my tale, and for helping me to find the meaning in it. My Pell would have liked you. You both be men of honor. I accept your word that you will help me tell my Pell."
Zedd twisted around in his chair and raised his face to her soft smile and kind eyes. "I will do whatever I can to help you keep your oath. You have my oath on that."
Her smile widened as she smoothed down a stray lick of his white hair. "Now. Tell me of the Stone of Tears. We must decide what is to be done with it."
23
"The Stone of Tears? Well, it is hidden."
She gave a single, firm nod. "Good. It not be something to be loose in this world." Her brow wrinkled in a little frown. "It be hidden well? It be safe?"
Zedd winced a little. He didn't want to tell her, he knew what she would say, but he had promised. "I put it on a chain. Put it on a chain and hung it around the neck of a little girl. I don't know... exactly... where she is right now."
"You touched it!" Adie's eyes widened. "The Stone of Tears? You touched it, and hung it around the neck of a little girl!"
She gripped his chin firmly in her suddenly powerful fingers and leaned close to his face. "You have hung the Stone of Tears, the stone that it be told was hung by the Creator Himself around the Keeper's neck to lock him in the underworld... You hung that around a little girl's neck? And let her wander off!"
Zedd scowled defensively. "Well I had to do something with it. I couldn't just leave it lying about."
Adie smacked the palm of her hand to her forehead. "Just as he makes me think him wise, he shows me he be a fool indeed. Dear spirits, save me from the hands you have placed me in."
Zedd shot to his feet. "And just what would you have done with it!"
"Well I would have certainly given it more thought that you seem to have done. And I wouldn't have touched it! It be a thing from another world!" She turned her back to him, shaking her head and whispered things in her foreign tongue.
Zedd shifted his robes, straightening them with a firm tug. "I didn't have the luxury of time to give it any thought. We were attacked by a screeling. If I had left it there..."
Adie spun around. "A screeling! You be full of good news, old man." She jabbed a finger against his chest. "That still be no good excuse. You still should not have..."
"Not have what? Not have picked it up? I should have let the screeling pick it up, instead?"
"Screelings be assassins. They not be there to take the stone."
Zedd jabbed a finger right back at her. "You know that? Are you so sure? Would you have been willing to have risked everything on it? And if you were wrong, let the Keeper have the Stone to do with as he would? Are you so sure, Adie?"
Her hand dropped to her side as she stared at his frown. "No. I guess not. It could be as you say. There be a chance the screeling may have taken it. Perhaps you did the only thing you could do." She shook the finger at him. "But to hang it around the neck of a little girl... !"
"And where would you have had me keep it? In my pocket? In the pocket of a wizard? In the pocket of one with the gift, where the Keeper is sure to want to look first? Or perhaps you would have had me hide it, in a place only I knew, where, if a Baneling gets his hands on me and somehow makes me talk, I could tell him it would be, so he could go and collect it?"
Adie fold
ed her arms with a muttered curse. At last her expression relaxed. "Well... perhaps..."
"Perhaps nothing. I had no choice. It was an act of desperation. I did the only thing I could do, given the circumstances."
She gave a tired sigh, then a nod. "You be right, wizard. You did the best you could have done." She patted the top of his shoulder. "Foolish as it be," she added under her breath. Her hand gave a gentle push. "Sit. Let me show you something."
Zedd sat as he watched her limp across the room toward the shelves. "I would rather have done anything else, Adie," he said sorrowfully, "than what I had to do."
She nodded as she walked. "I know..." She stopped and turned. "A screeling, you say?" Zedd gave her a nod. "You be sure it be a screeling?" He arched an eyebrow. "Yes, of course you be sure." Her brow creased in thought. "Screelings be the Keeper's assassins. They be singleminded, and extremely dangerous, but they not be very smart. They must have something to show them the one they be after, a way to find them. They not be good at searching in this world. How could the Keeper know where you be? How could the screeling know to find you? Know it be you he be after?"
Zedd shrugged. "I don't know. I was where the boxes had been opened. But it had been some time since it had happened. There would be no way to know I was still there."
"And did you destroy the screeling?"
"Yes."
"That be good. The Keeper will not waste the effort to send another, not after you have proven you be able to defeat it.
Zedd threw his hands up. "Oh yes, just wonderful. Screelings are sent to eliminate a threat to the Keeper. It was probably sent to rid the Keeper of my meddling, just as the Keeper sent a baneling to rid himself of your interference. You are right: he will not send another screeling, now that I have proven that I can defeat one. He will send something worse."
"If indeed it be sent for you." She touched a finger to her lower lip as she mumbled to herself. "Where be the Stone when you found it?"
"Next to the box that had been opened."
"And where came the screeling?"
"In the same room as the boxes, as the Stone."
She shook her head in puzzlement. "Perhaps it could be as you say, that it came to get the stone, but it makes no sense for a screeling to come for the Stone. I wonder how he found you." She limped on toward the shelves. "Something had to guide him."
Balancing on her toes, she peered to the back of a shelf, carefully pushing aside various objects, at last retrieving what she sought. Holding it in one hand, she limped back and placed it carefully on the table. It was a little bigger than a hen's egg, round, and age darkened with a deep patina that was a brownish black in the recesses. It was masterfully carved into the shape of a vicious beast, all balled up, but glaring with eyes that seemed to watch you no matter which way it was held. It looked to be bone, and very old.
Zedd picked it up, testing its weight. It was much heaver than he thought it should have been. "What's this?"
"A woman, a sorceress, gave this to me when I went to her, to learn. She be on her death bed. She asked if I knew of the skrin. I told her what I knew. She sighed with relief, and then said something that made my skin prickle. She said she had been waiting for me, as the prophecies had told her to do. She placed this in my hand, saying it be carved from the bone of a skrin."
Adie flicked her hand toward the walls, and then toward the bone pile. "I have a whole skrin here, among the bones. I did battle with one once, in the pass. His bones be here. His skull be on the shelf. It be the one that fell on the floor."
She put a thin finger on the carved bone sphere in Zedd's hand as she leaned toward him and lowered her raspy voice. "This, the old one said, must be guarded, by one who understands. She told me it be of ancient magic, made by wizards of old, possibly with their hand guided by the Creator Himself. Made because of prophecies.
"She said it may be the most important thing of magic I would ever touch. That it be invested with more power than she or I would ever understand. She said that it be of skrin bone, and of skrin force, that it be a talisman that be of importance if the veil ever be in danger.
"I asked how it was to be used, how the magic worked, and how it had come into her hands. She be very exhausted from the excitement of my coming to her, and said she must rest. She told me to come back to her in the morning and she would tell me everything she knew. When I returned, she had died." Adie gave him a meaningful look. "Her death be a little too timely to suit me."
Zedd had had the same thought. "But you have no idea what it is, or how it is to be used?"
"No."
Already, Zedd was using magic to lift it on a cushion of air, floating it in space, watching it slowly spin. The whole time the finely carved eyes of the beast peered back as the ball revolved before him. "Have you tried using any magic on it?"
"I be afraid to try."
Zedd held his bony hands to each side of the carving as it floated, probing gently with different kinds of force, different sorts of magic, letting them shift and slide over the round bone, testing, searching gingerly for a crack, a shield, a trigger.
It had the oddest feel to it. The magic reflected back as if it had touched nothing, as if the thing weren't there at all. Perhaps it could be a shield he had never seen before. He increased the force. It slipped against the carving like new shoe leather on ice.
Adie wrung her hands. "I do not think you should be..."
The flame of the lamp puffed out. A thin thread of greasy smoke curled from the abruptly dead wick. The room was left to the flickering shadows cast from the fire in the hearth. Zedd frowned at the dark lamp.
A sudden crash brought both their heads jerking around. The skull rolled across the floor toward where they sat. Halfway there, it wobbled and rocked to a stop, right side up. Empty eye sockets stared up at the two of them. Long fangs rested on the wood floor.
The carved bone ball thumped to the table, bouncing twice, as Zedd and Adie came to their feet.
"What foolish thing did you do, old man?"
Zedd stared at the skull. "I didn't do anything."
More bones tumbled from the shelves. Bones hanging on the wall clattered to the floor, some bouncing and flipping back into the air as they struck.
Zedd and Adie both turned to a racket behind them. The bone pile rattled apart, bones toppling and spilling over one another as the pile pulled itself apart. Some of the bones, as if alive, slid or rolled across the floor. Toward the skull. Sliding along the floor, a rib bone caught the leg of a chair and spun around, but continued on.
Zedd twisted to Adie, but she was hurrying to the shelf above the counter behind the table, the one covered with the blue and white striped cloth.
"Adie, What are you doing? What's going on?"
Bones collected in increasing number around the skull.
She yanked the cloth away, ripping it from its hooks. "Leave! Before it be too late!"
"What's going on!"
Jars and tins clanged together as she shoved them aside. She pushed her hand further along the shelf, fingers searching blindly. Canisters thudded to the floor. A jar tumbled out, shattering on the edge of the counter, throwing sparkling shards of glass over the table and chairs. A thick, dark mass from the jar oozed over the edge of the counter, carrying splinters of glass with it, making it look like nothing more than a melting porcupine.
"Do as I say, wizard! Leave! Now!"
Zedd rushed toward her, glass crunching under his feet. He jerked to a halt when he glanced over his shoulder toward the skull.
It was level with his eyes, bones collecting and assembling under it as it rose into the air. A few rib bones ranked themselves, vertebrae slipped into line, talons tipped claws, leg bones erected to the side of each flank. The jaw snapped into place as the skull rose toward the ceiling.
Zedd spun toward Adie, snatched her by the arm, yanking her toward him. She came away from the counter clutching a small tin in her other hand.
"Adie, what's hap
pening!"
Her head tilted up toward the skull brushing the ceiling. "What do you see?"
"What do I see! Bags, woman! I see a bunch of bones come to life!"
The shoulders of the skrin hunched as the thing grew with the addition of more bones. More yet were sliding across the floor toward it.
Adie gapped at him. "I don't see bones. I see flesh."
"Flesh! Bags! I thought you said you killed that thing."
"I said I battled it. I do not know that a skrin can be killed. I do not think they be alive. You be right about one thing, Wizard: since you be able to defeat a screeling, the Keeper sent worse."
"How did he know where we were? How does the skrin know where we are? All these bones are supposed to hide us!"
"I do not know. I cannot understand how..."
A skeletal arm swept toward them. Zedd lurched back, pulling her with him. Yet more bones assembled. Adie was frantically unscrewing the tin as he dragged her around the back of the table. The lid came off, dropping to the floor, spinning like a top. The skrin lunged, bringing an arm down. With a loud crack, the table shattered into splinters.
The round, carved ball bounced across the floor. Zedd tried to snatch it with a magic, but it was like trying to pinch a pumpkin seed with greased fingers. He tried to scoop it up with air compressed around it, but it slipped away and rolled into the corner.
The skrin skeleton leapt at them. They both went down in a heap as he yanked her back. Zedd hauled her to her feet as she thrust her hand into the little tin. The skrin was having trouble moving quickly; it had grown too large to fit beneath the ceiling.
The jaws of the beast opened wide, as if to roar. No sound came forth, but Zedd could feel a blast of air. It made their robes flap and fly as if in a wind.
Adie's hand came out of the tin, flinging sparkling white sand at the beast.
Sorcerer's sand. The fool woman had sorcerer's sand.
The skrin staggered back a step, shaking its head. It recovered in an instant, lurching forward again. Zedd unleashed a ball of fire. It passed among the bones to splatter liquid flame against the far wall. The tongues of flame sputtered out, leaving behind a sooty splotch. Zedd tried air, since fire didn't work. It had no effect.