'"Breaking your oath be the first step, and look what you have done since. Look at what you be doing right now. Look at how far you have slipped toward him. You be within his grasp now. You may not have given him your oath, but you do his bidding. You have become what you hate. You have become me; you be a baneling. The Keeper smiles upon you, Adie, and thanks you for welcoming him into your heart." Mathrin slumped, and fell back, dead.'
Adie dissolved into tears, her head sagging into her hands. Zedd unlocked his joints and swept around the table, holding her to him as he stood next to her, holding her head against his stomach, stroking her hair, comforting her as she cried.
'Not so, dear lady. Not so at all.'
She wept against his robes, shaking her head. 'You think you be so smart, wizard? You not be so smart as you think. You be wrong about this.'
Zedd knelt beside her chair, holding her hands in his, looking up into her stricken face. 'I'm smart enough to know that the Keeper, or one of his minions, would not let you have the satisfaction of knowing you had won a battle against him.'
'But I...'
'You fought back. You struck out from your hurt, not for a lust of the things you did. Not for a want to help the Keeper.'
Her brow wrinkled together with her effort to stop the tears. 'You be so sure? Sure enough to trust one such as I?'
Zedd smiled. 'I'm sure. I may not know everything, but I know you are no baneling. You are the victim, not the criminal.'
She shook her head. 'I not be so sure as you.'
After Mathrin died, did you go on killing? Seeking vengeance against any innocent?'
'No, of course not.'
'Had you been an agent, you would have given yourself over to the Keeper, to his wishes, and gone on to hurt those who fought him. You are no baneling, dear lady. My heart weeps for the things the Keeper took from you, but he did not take your soul, that is still yours. Put those fears aside.'
He held her hands and gave them soft squeezes. She didn't try to take her hands back, but let them stay in his, as if to soak up the comfort as they trembled.
Adie wiped the tears from her cheek. 'Pour me some more tea? But no more powdered cloud leaf, or I will fall asleep before I can finish the story.'
Zedd arched an eyebrow. She had known what he had done. He patted her shoulder as he rose to his feet. He poured her tea and then pulled his chair forward and sat again while she sipped.
After she drank half of her cup, she looked to have regained her control. 'The war with D'Hara be burning hot, but it be near the end. I felt the boundary go up. Felt it come into this world.'
'So you came here right after the boundary went up?'
'No. I studied with a few women first. Some taught me a few things about bones.' She pulled a little necklace from under her robes. She fingered the small, round bone, with red and yellow beads to each side. It was just like the one she had given him to get him through the pass. He still wore it around his neck. 'This be a bone from the base of a skull like that on the shelf over there; the one that fell on the floor. The beast be called a skrin. Skrin be guardian beasts to the underworld, something like the heart hounds, except they guard in both directions. The best way to explain it is that they be part of the veil, though that not be accurate. In this world they be solid, have form, but in the other, they be only a force.'
Zedd frowned. 'Force?'
Adie held out her spoon and let it drop on the table. 'Force. We cannot see it, but force be there. It makes the spoon drop, and keeps it from flying up into the air. It cannot be seen, but it be there. Something like that with the skrin.
'On rare occasions, in their duty to repel all from the cusp where the world of the living and the world of the dead touch, they be pulled into this world. Few people know of them because it so rarely happens.' Zedd was frowning. 'It be very complex. I will explain it better another time. The important thing be that this bone from the skrin hides you from them.'
Adie took a sip of her tea while Zedd pulled his necklace out of his robes, taking a new look at it. 'And it must hide you from other beasts, too, to get through the pass?' She nodded. 'How did you know about the pass? I put the boundary up, and I didn't know the pass existed.'
She turned the teacup around and around in her fingers. 'After I left my grandmother, I sought out women with the gift, women who could teach me things about the world of the dead. After Mathrin died, I studied harder, with more urgency. Each woman could tell me only what small bit she knew, but they usually knew one who knew more. I traveled the Midlands, going among them, gathering knowledge. I collected all those bits of knowledge, piecing them together. In this manner, I learned a little of how the worlds interact.
'By putting up a boundary across parts of this world, it be a little like stoppering up a teakettle and then putting it on the fire. Without a vent, something will blow off. I knew that if there be magic wise enough to know how to bring the underworld into this, it must have a way to equalize each side of the boundary. A vent of some sort. A pass.'
Zedd lifted an eyebrow, staring off into his thoughts, as he drew his thumb down his chin. 'Of course. That makes sense. Balance. All force, all magic, must be balanced.' He focused his eyes on her. 'When I brought up the boundary, I was using magic I didn't fully understand. It was in an ancient book, from the wizards of old, who had more power than I can fathom. Using their instructions to bring up the boundary was an act of desperation.'
'It be hard for me to imagine you being desperate.'
'Sometimes, that's all life is: one desperate act after another.'
Adie nodded. 'Perhaps you be right. I was desperate to hide from the Keeper. I remembered what Mathrin had said: he be hiding right under my nose. I reasoned that the safest place for me to hide from the Keeper would be where he wouldn't look: right under his nose, right at the edge of his world. So I came to the pass.
'The pass did not be this world, yet it did not be the underworld either. It be a mix of both. A place where both worlds boiled together a little bit. With the bones, I be able to hide from the Keeper. He and the beasts from his world could not see me.'
'Hide?' The woman had more iron in her than the kettle hanging on the fire. If he knew Adie, there was more to it. Zedd gave her a stern stare. 'You came here, simply to hide?'
She averted her eyes as she fingered the small, round bone on her necklace, and then at last tucked it back into her robes. There be another reason. I made an oath. To myself. I swore I would find a way to contact my Pell, to tell him I did not betray him.' She took a long swallow of tea. 'I have spent most of my life here, in the pass, trying to find a way to reach into the world of the dead, to tell him. The pass be part of that world.'
Zedd pushed at his cup with a finger. 'The boundary, the pass, is gone, Adie. I need your help in this world.'
She laid her arms on the table. 'When you grew my foot back for me, it brought back everything that had happened, made it fresh, as if I be reliving it. It made me remember some things I had forgotten for a long time. It made me remember hurts that still be there, though time had dimmed them.'
'I'm sorry, Adie,' he whispered. 'I should have taken your past into consideration, but I didn't suspect you had lived through that much pain. Forgive me.'
There be nothing to forgive. You gave me a gift by giving me my foot back. You did not know the things I have done. It not be your fault I did them. You did not know I be a baneling.'
He cast her a harsh glare. 'You think that because you have fought back against wickedness, you have become wicked?'
'I have done worse than a man like you can understand.'
Zedd nodded slightly. 'Is that so. Let me tell you a little story. I had a love once, like your Pell. Her name was Erilyn. My time with her was like your time with Pell.' A slow smile came to his lips, as his memory touched the mist of those pleasant times. The smile withered. 'Until Panis Rahl sent a quad after her.'
Adie reached out and laid a hand on his. 'Zedd, you do not need to...'
Zedd brought his other fist down on the table, making the cups jump. 'You can't imagine what the four of them did to her.' He leaned forward, his face standing out red against his white hair. He ground his teeth together. 'I hunted them down. What I did to each of them would make whatever you did to Mathrin seem a lark. I went after Panis Rahl, but couldn't reach him, so I went after his armies. For every man you killed, Adie, I killed a thousand. Even my own side feared me. I was the wind of death. I did what was needed to stop Panis Rahl. And maybe more.'
He settled his weight back in the chair. 'If there is such a thing as a man of virtue, you do not sit with him now.'
'You did only what you had to. That does not diminish your virtue.'
He arched an eyebrow. 'Wise words, spoken by a wise woman. Perhaps you should listen to them.' She remained silent. He put his elbows on the table and idly picked up the cup, rolling it in his palms as he went on. 'In a way, I was luckier than you. I had more time with my Erilyn. And I didn't lose my daughter.'
'Panis Rahl did not try to kill your daughter, too?'
'Yes. Indeed, he thought he had. I... cast a death spell. To make them think they had seen her death. It was the only way to protect her, to keep them from trying until they succeeded.'
A death spell...' Adie whispered a benediction in her native tongue. That be a dangerous web. I would not reproach you for doing such a thing, you had cause, but such a thing does not go unnoticed by the spirits. You be lucky it worked, and it saved her. You be very fortunate the good spirits be with you on that day.'
'I guess sometimes it's hard to tell which side of luck you're looking at. I raised her without a mother. She had grown into a fine young woman when it happened.
'Darken Rahl had been standing next to his father when I sent the Wizard's Fire through the boundary. He was standing next to his father when my fire found him. Some of it burned Darken Rahl. He spent his growing years learning, so he could finish what his father had started, and extract his vengeance. He learned how to cross the boundary; he was coming into the Midlands, and I never knew.
'He raped my daughter.
'He didn't know who she was - everyone thought my daughter was dead - or he would have killed her sure. But he hurt her.' He pressed his palms together. The cup shattered. He turned his hands up, to see if they had been cut, and was a little surprised they weren't. Adie said nothing.
'After that, I took her to Westland, to hide, to protect her. I never knew if it was more of that bad luck, or if somehow wickedness found her, but she died. Burned to death in her house. Though I always suspected the irony was more than coincidence, I never found proof it was so. Perhaps, after all, the good spirits hadn't been with me on the day I cast her death spell.'
'I be sorry, Zedd,' Adie said in a soft rasp.
He waved off her pity with a flourish of his hand. 'I still had her boy.' With the side of his finger, he pushed the shards of the cup into a little pile in the center of the wooden tabletop. 'Darken Rahl's son. The spawn of an agent of the Keeper. But my daughter's son too, and my grandson. Innocent of the crimes that brought him to be. A fine boy.'
He looked up at her from under his bushy eyebrows. 'I believe you know him. His name is Richard.'
Adie lurched forward in her chair. 'Richard! Richard is your...' She leaned back, shaking her head. 'Wizards and their secrets.' She scowled a little, but then softened her expression. 'Perhaps you had just cause for a secret such as this. Does Richard have the gift?'
Zedd lifted his eyebrows as he nodded. 'Indeed he does. That was one reason I hid him in Westland. I feared he had the gift, though I wasn't sure, and I wanted him to be safe from danger. As you said, the Keeper lusts for those with the gift more than any other. I knew that if I began teaching him, used magic very much myself, the gaze of danger would settle on him.
'I wanted to let him grow, become strong of character, before I tested him, and if he had the gift, taught him. I had always suspected he had the gift. Sometimes, I hoped he did not. But I now know he does. He used it to stop Darken Rahl. Used magic.'
He leaned forward. 'I suspect he has the gift from both his grandfather and his father. From two different lines of wizards.'
'I see,' was all she said.
'But we have more important things to worry about right now. Darken Rahl used the boxes of Orden. He opened one, the wrong one, for him anyway. But maybe the wrong one for us too. There are books back at the Keep that speak of it. They warn that if the boxes are used, if the Magic of Orden is used, and even if the person who put them in play makes a mistake and it kills him, it can still tear the veil.
'Adie, I don't know as much about the underworld as you. You have been studying it most of your life. I need your help. I need you to come to Aydindril with me to study the books to see what can be done. I've read many of them and don't understand much of their meaning. Perhaps you will. Even if you only see one thing I miss, it could be important.'
She stared at the table with a bitter expression. 'I be an old woman. I be an old woman who has welcomed the Keeper into my heart.'
Zedd watched her, but she didn't meet his eyes. He pushed his chair back and stood. 'An old woman? No. A foolish woman, maybe.' She didn't reply. Her gaze stayed pointedly on the table.
Zedd strolled across the room and inspected the bones hanging on the wall. He clasped his hands behind his back as he studied the talismans of the dead.
'Maybe I am just an old man then. Hmm? A foolish old man. Maybe I should let a young man do this work.' He glanced over his shoulder. She was watching him. 'But if a young man is good, then even younger would be better. In fact, why not let a child do it? That would be better yet. Maybe there is a ten-year-old-boy somewhere who will be willing to do something to stop the dead from swallowing the living.'
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 tabletop 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 lock of his white hair. 'Now. Tell me of the Stone of Tears. We must decide what is to be done with it.'
CHAPTER 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 than 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 whispering 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 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 folded 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 let out a tired sigh, then nodded. '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 nodded. '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're right: he will not send another screeling, now that I've 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 heavier 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 deathbed. 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.'
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