Debt of Bones (Sword of Truth 0.50)

‘And not a very flattering one,’ Zedd grumbled as he stepped up behind them.

‘But... how?’ Abby pressed her fingers to her temples, ‘I don’t understand.’

Zedd gestured. Abby saw, for the first time, the body lying just beyond the door out the back. It was Mariska.

‘When you showed me the room when we first came here,’ Zedd told her, ‘I laid a few traps for those intent on harm. That woman was killed by those traps because she came here intent on taking my daughter from where she slept.’

‘You mean it was all an illusion?’ Abby was dumbfounded. ‘Why would you do such a cruel thing? How could you?’

‘I am the object of vengeance,’ the wizard explained. ‘I didn’t want my daughter to pay the price her mother has already paid. Since my spell killed the woman as she tried to harm my daughter, I was able to use a vision of her to accomplish the deception. The enemy knew the woman, and that she acted for Anargo. I used what they expected to see to convince them and to frighten them into running and leaving the prisoners.

‘I cast the death spell so that everyone would think they saw my daughter being killed. This way, the enemy thinks my daughter dead, and will have no reason to hunt her or ever again try to harm her. I did it to protect her from the unforeseen. This way, the enemy thinks my daughter dead and will have no reason to hunt her or ever again try to harm her.’

The sorceress scowled at him. ‘If it were any but you, Zeddicus, and for any reason but the reason you had, I’d see you brought up on charges for casting such a web as a death spell.’ She broke into a grin. ‘Well done, First Wizard.’

Outside, the officers all wanted to know what was happening.

‘No battle today,’ Zedd told them. ‘I’ve just ended the war.’

They cheered with genuine joy. Had Zedd not been the First Wizard, Abby suspected they would have hoisted him on their shoulders. It seemed that there was no one more glad for peace than those whose job it was to fight for it.

Wizard Thomas, looking more humble than Abby had ever seen him, cleared his throat. ‘Zorander, I... I... I simply can’t believe what my own eyes have seen.’ His face finally took on its familiar scowl. ‘But we have people already in near revolt over magic. When news of this spreads, it is only going to make it worse. The demands for relief from magic grow every day and you have fed the fury. With this, we’re liable to have revolt on our hands.’

‘I still want to know why it isn’t moving,’ Delora growled from behind. ‘I want to know why it’s just sitting there, all green and still.’

Zedd ignored her and directed his attention to the old wizard. ‘Thomas, I have a job for you.’

He motioned several officers and officials from Aydindril forward, and passed a finger before all their faces, his own turning grim and determined. ‘I have a job for all of you. The people have reason to fear magic. Today we have seen magic deadly and dangerous. I can understand those fears.

‘In appreciation of these fears, I shall grant their wish.’

‘What!’ Thomas scoffed. ‘You can’t end magic, Zorander! Not even you can accomplish such a paradox.’

‘Not end it,’ Zedd said. ‘But give them a place without it. I want you to organize an official delegation large enough to travel all the Midlands with the offer. All those who would quit a world with magic are to move to the lands to the west. There they shall set up new lives free of any magic. I shall ensure that magic cannot intrude on their peace.’

Thomas threw up his hands. ‘How can you make such a promise!’

Zedd’s arm lifted to point off behind him, to the wall of green fire growing towards the sky. ‘I shall call up a second wall of death, through which none can pass. On the other side it shall be a place free of magic. There, people will be free to live their lives without magic.

‘I want you all to see that the word is passed through the land. People have until spring to emigrate to the lands west. Thomas, you will warrant that none with magic make the journey. We have books we can use to ensure that we purge a place of any with a trace of magic. We can assure that there will be no magic there.

‘In the spring, when all who wish have gone to their new homeland, I will seal them off from magic. In one fell swoop, I will satisfy the large majority of the petitions that come to us; they will have lives without magic. May the good spirits watch over them, and may they not come to regret their wish granted.’

Thomas pointed heatedly at the thing Zedd had brought into the world.

‘But what about that thing? What if people go wandering into it in the dark? They will be walking into death,’

‘Not only in the dark,’ Zedd said. ‘Once it has stabilized it will be hard to see at all. We will have to set up guards to keep people away. We will have to set aside land near the boundary and have men guard the area to keep people out.’

‘Men?’ Abby asked. ‘You mean you will have to start a corps of boundary wardens?’

‘Yes,’ Zedd said, his eyebrows lifting, ‘that’s a good name for them. Boundary wardens.’

Silence settled over those leaning in to hear the wizard’s words. The mood had changed and was now serious with the grim matter at hand. Abby couldn’t imagine a place without magic, but she knew how vehemently some wished it.

Thomas finally nodded. ‘Zedd, this time I think you’ve got it right. Sometimes, we must serve the people by not serving them.’ The others mumbled their agreement, though, like Abby, it seemed to them a bleak solution.

Zedd straightened. ‘Then it is decided.’

He turned and announced to the crowd the end of the war, and the division to come in which those who had petitioned for years would finally have their petition granted; for those who wished it, a land outside the Midlands, without magic, would be created.

While everyone was chattering about such a mysterious and exotic thing as a land without magic, or cheering and celebrating the end of the war, Abby whispered to Jana to wait with her father a moment. She kissed her daughter and then took the opportunity to pull Zedd aside.

‘Zedd, may I speak with you? I have a question.’

Zedd smiled and took her by the elbow, urging Abby into her small home. ‘I’d like to check on my daughter. Come along.’

Abby cast caution to the winds and took the Mother Confessor’s hand in one of hers, Delora’s in the other, and pulled them in with her. They had a right to hear this, too.

‘Zedd,’ Abby asked once they were away from the crowd in her yard.

‘May I please know the debt your father owed my mother?’

Zedd lifted an eyebrow. ‘My father owed your mother no debt.’

Abby frowned. ‘But it was a debt of bones, passed down from your father to you, and from my mother to me.’

‘Oh, it was a debt all right, but not owed to your mother, but by your mother.’

‘What?’ Abby asked in stunned confusion. ‘What do you mean?’

Zedd smiled. ‘When your mother was giving birth to you, she was in trouble. You both were dying in the labour. My father used magic to save her. Helsa begged him to save you, too. In order to keep you in the world of the living and out of the Keeper’s grasp, without thought to his own safety, he worked far beyond the endurance anyone would expect of a wizard.

‘Your mother was a sorceress, and understood the extent of what was involved in saving your life. In appreciation of what my father had done, she swore a debt to him. When she died, the debt passed to you.’

Abby, eyes wide, tried to reconcile the whole thing in her mind. Her mother had never told her the nature of the debt.

‘But... but you mean that it is I who owe the debt to you? You mean that the debt of bones is my burden?’

Zedd pushed open the door to the room where his daughter slept, smiling as he looked in. ‘The debt is paid, Abby. The bracelet your mother gave you had magic, linking you to the debt. Thank you for my daughter’s life.’

Abby glanced to the Mother Confessor. Trick

ster indeed. ‘But why would you help me, if it was really not a debt of bones you owed me? If it was really a debt I owed you?’

Zedd shrugged. ‘We reap a reward merely in the act of helping others. We never know how, or if, that reward will come back to us. Helping is the reward; none other is needed nor better.’

Abby watched the beautiful little girl sleeping in the room beyond. ‘I am thankful to the good spirits that I could help keep such a life in this world. I may not have the gift, but I can foresee that she will go on to be a person of import, not only for you, but for others.’

Zedd smiled idly as he watched his daughter sleeping. ‘I think you may have the gift of prophecy, my dear, for she is already a person who has played a part in bringing a war to an end, and in so doing, saved the lives of countless people.’

The sorceress pointed out the window. ‘I still want to know why that thing isn’t moving. It was supposed to pass over D’Hara and purge it of all life, to kill them all for what they have done.’ Her scowl deepened. ‘Why is it just sitting there?’

Zedd folded his hands. ‘It ended the war. That is enough. The wall is a part of the underworld itself, the world of the dead. Their army will not be able to cross it and make war on us for as long as such a boundary stands.’

‘And how long will that be?’

Zedd shrugged. ‘Nothing remains for ever. For now, there will be peace. The killing is ended.’

The sorceress did not look to be satisfied. ‘But they were trying to kill us all!’

‘Well, now they can’t. Delora, there are those in D’Hara who are innocent, too. Just because Panis Rahl wished to conquer and subjugate us, that does not mean that all the D’Haran people are evil. Many good people in D’Hara have suffered under harsh rule. How could I kill everyone there, including all the people who have caused no harm, and themselves wish only to live their lives in peace?’

Delora wiped a hand across her face. ‘Zeddicus, sometimes I don’t know about you. Sometimes, you make a lousy wind of death.’

The Mother Confessor stood staring out the window, towards D’Hara. Her violet eyes turned back to the wizard.

‘There will be those over there who will be your foes for life because of this, Zedd. You have made bitter enemies with this. You have left them alive.’

‘Enemies,’ the wizard said, ‘are the price of honour.’