Debt Of Bones

'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 Rani'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 not only their assignment 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 sorts. 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, too, have managed to get our hands on several high-ranking 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 Rah! offered the life of Zedd's daughter if Zedd would surrender himself to Panis Rahl to be executed.'

Abby clutched at 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.'