The Mother Confessor appraised Abby’s eyes a moment, and then held up a cautionary finger. “In confidence, I am going to tell you about Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander. If you ever repeat this story, I will never forgive you for betraying my confidence.”
“I won’t, but I don’t see—”
“Just listen.”
After Abby remained silent the Mother Confessor began. “Zedd married Erilyn. She was a wonderful woman. We all loved her very much, but not as much as did he. They had a daughter.”
Abby’s curiosity got the best of her. “How old is she?”
“About the age of your daughter,” Delora said.
Abby swallowed. “I see.”
“When Zedd became First Wizard, things were grim. Panis Rahl had conjured the shadow people.”
“I’m from Coney Crossing. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Well, the war had been bad enough, but then Panis Rahl taught his wizards to conjure shadow people.” The Mother Confessor sighed at the anguish of retelling the story. “They are so called because they are like shadows in the air. They have no precise shape or form. They are not living, but created out of magic. Weapons have no more effect on them than they would have on smoke.
“You can’t hide from the shadow people. They drift toward you across fields, or through the woods. They find you.
“When they touch someone, the person’s whole body blisters and swells until their flesh splits open. They die in screaming agony. Not even the gift can heal one touched by a shadow person.
“As the enemy attacked, their wizards would send the shadow people out ahead. In the beginning whole battalions of our brave young soldiers were found killed to a man. We saw no hope. It was our darkest hour.”
“And Wizard Zorander was able to stop them?” Abby asked.
The Mother Confessor nodded. “He studied the problem and then conjured battle horns. Their magic swept the shadow people away like smoke in the wind. The magic coming from the horns also traced its way back through the spell, to seek out the one who cast it, and kill them. The horns aren’t foolproof, though, and Zedd must constantly alter their magic to keep up with the way the enemy changes their conjuring.
“Panis Rahl summoned other magic, too: fevers and sickness, wasting illnesses, fogs that caused blindness—all sorts of horrors. Zedd worked day and night, and managed to counter them all. While Panis Rahl’s magic was being checked, our troops were once again able to fight on even terms. Because of Wizard Zorander, the tide of battle turned.”
“Well, that much of it is good, but—”
The Mother Confessor again lifted her finger, commanding silence. Abby held her tongue as the woman lowered her hand and went on.
“Panis Rahl was enraged at what Zedd had done. He tried and failed to kill him, so he instead sent a quad to kill Erilyn.”
“A quad? What’s a quad?”
“A quad,” the sorceress answered, “is a unit of four special assassins sent with the protection of a spell from the one who sent them: Panis Rahl. It is their assignment not only to kill the victim, but to make it unimaginably torturous and brutal.”
Abby swallowed. “And did they … murder his wife?”
The Mother Confessor leaned closer. “Worse. They left her, her legs and arms all broken, to be found still alive.”
“Alive?” Abby whispered. “Why would they leave her alive, if it was their mission to kill her?”
“So that Zedd would find her all broken and bleeding and in inconceivable agony. She was able only to whisper his name in love.” The Mother Confessor leaned even closer. Abby could feel the breath of the woman’s whispered words against her own face. “When he used his gift to try to heal her, it activated the worm spell.”
Abby had to force herself to blink. “Worm spell … ?”
“No wizard would have been able to detect it.” The Mother Confessor clawed her fingers and, in front of Abby’s stomach, spread her hands outward, in a tearing gesture. “The spell ripped her insides apart. Because he had used his loving touch of magic, she died in screaming pain as he knelt helpless beside her.”
Wincing, Abby touched her own stomach, almost feeling the wound. “That’s terrible.”
The Mother Confessor’s violet eyes held an iron look. “The quad also took their daughter. Their daughter, who had seen everything those men had done to her mother.”
Abby felt tears burning her eyes again. “They did that to his daughter, too?”
“No,” the Mother Confessor said. “They hold her captive.”
“Then she still lives? There is still hope?”
The Mother Confessor’s satiny white dress rustled softly as she leaned back against the white marble balustrade and nested her hands in her lap. “Zedd went after the quad. He found them, but his daughter had been given to others, and they passed her on to yet others, and so on, so they had no idea who had her, or where she might be.”
Abby looked to the sorceress and back to the Mother Confessor. “What did Wizard Zorander do to the quad?”
“No less than I myself would have done.” The Mother Confessor stared back through a mask of cold rage. “He made them regret ever being born. For a very long time he made them regret it.”
Abby shrank back. “I see.”
As the Mother Confessor drew a calming breath, the sorceress took up the story. “As we speak, Wizard Zorander uses a spell that none of us understands; it holds Panis Rahl at his palace in D’Hara. It helps blunt the magic Rahl is able to conjure against us, and enables our men to drive his troops back whence they came.
“But Panis Rahl is consumed with wrath for the man who has thwarted his conquest of the Midlands. Hardly a week passes that an attempt is not made on Wizard Zorander’s life. Rahl sends dangerous and vile people of all sort. Even the Mord-Sith.”
Abby’s breath caught. That was a word she had heard. “What are Mord-Sith?”
The sorceress smoothed back her glossy black hair as she glared with a venomous expression. “Mord-Sith are women who, along with their red leather uniform, wear a single long braid as the mark of their profession. They are trained in the torture and killing of those with the gift. If a gifted person tries to use their magic against a Mord-Sith, she is able to capture their magic and use it against them. There is no escaping a Mord-Sith.”
“But surely, a person as strong in the gift as Wizard Zorander—”
“Even he would be lost if he tried to use magic against a Mord-Sith,” the Mother Confessor said. “A Mord-Sith can be defeated with common weapons—but not with magic. Only the magic of a Confessor works against them. I have killed two.
“In part because of the brutal nature of the training of Mord-Sith, they have been outlawed for as long as anyone knows, but in D’Hara the ghastly tradition of taking young women to be indoctrinated as Mord-Sith continues to this day. D’Hara is a distant and secretive land. We don’t know much about it, except what we have learned through unfortunate experience.
“Mord-Sith have captured several of our wizards and sorceresses. Once captured, they cannot kill themselves, nor can they escape. Before they die, they give over everything they know. Panis Rahl knows of our plans.
“We, in turn, have managed to get our hands on several highranking D’Harans, and through the touch of Confessors we know the extent of how we have been compromised. Time works against us.”
Abby wiped the palms of her hands on her thighs. “And that man who was killed just before I went in to see the First Wizard, he couldn’t have been an assassin; the two with him were allowed to leave.”
“No, he was not an assassin.” The Mother Confessor folded her hands. “I believe Panis Rahl knows of the spell Wizard Zorander discovered, that it has the potential to obliterate all of D’Hara. Panis Rahl is desperate to rid himself of Wizard Zorander.”
The Mother Confessor’s violet eyes seemed to glisten with a keen intellect. Abby looked away and picked at a stray thread on her sack. “But I don?
??t see what this has to do with denying me help to save my daughter. He has a daughter. Wouldn’t he do anything to get her back? Wouldn’t he do whatever he must to have his daughter back and safe?”
The Mother Confessor’s head lowered and she stroked her fingers over her brow, as if trying to rub at a grievous ache. “The man who came before you was a messenger. His message had been passed through many hands so that it could not be traced back to its source.”
Abby felt cold goose bumps running up her arms. “What was the message?”
“The lock of hair he brought was from Zedd’s daughter. Panis Rahl offered the life of Zedd’s daughter if Zedd would surrender himself to Panis Rahl to be executed.”
Abby clutched a her sack. “But wouldn’t a father who loved his daughter do even this to save her life?”
“At what cost?” the Mother Confessor whispered. “At the cost of the lives of all those who will die without his help?
“He couldn’t do such a selfish thing, even to save the life of one he loves more than any other. Before he denied your daughter help, he had just refused the offer, thus sentencing his own innocent daughter to death.”
Abby felt her hopes again tumbling into blackness. The thought of Jana’s terror, of her being hurt, made Abby dizzy and sick. Tears began running down her cheeks again.
“But I’m not asking him to sacrifice everyone else to save her.”
The sorceress gently touched Abby’s shoulder. “He believes that sparing those people harm would mean letting the D’Harans escape to kill more people in the end.”
Abby snatched desperately for a solution. “But I have a bone.”
The sorceress sighed. “Abigail, half the people who come to see a wizard bring a bone. Hucksters convince supplicants that they are true bones. Desperate people, just like you, buy them.”
“Most of them come seeking a wizard to somehow give them a life free of magic,” the Mother Confessor said. “Most people fear magic, but I’m afraid that with the way it’s been used by D’Hara, they now want nothing so much as to never again see magic. An ironic reason to buy a bone, and doubly ironic that they buy sham bones, thinking they have magic, in order to petition to be free of magic.”
Abby blinked. “But I bought no bone. This is a debt true. On my mother’s deathbed she told me of it. She said it was Wizard Zorander himself bound in it.”
The sorceress squinted her skepticism. “Abigail, true debts of this nature are exceedingly rare. Perhaps it was a bone she had and you only thought …”
Abby held her sack open for the sorceress to see. The sorceress glanced in and fell silent. The Mother Confessor looked in the sack for herself.
“I know what my mother told me,” Abby insisted. “She also told me that if there was any doubt, he had but to test it; then he would know it true, for the debt was passed down to him from his father.”
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.”
On 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.”