Terry Goodkind: Debt of Bones

The Mother Confessor’s smile widened. “Don’t you remember?” she asked as she leaned close. “Don’t you remember what I told you we call him?”

Abby, confused by everything that had happened, couldn’t imagine what the Mother Confessor was talking about. When she admitted she didn’t, the Mother Confessor and the sorceress shepherded her onward, past the grave where Abby had reburied her mother’s skull upon her return, and into the house. With a hand, the Mother Confessor eased back the door to Abby’s bedroom. There, on the bed where Abby had placed her, was Zedd’s daughter, still sleeping. Abby stared in disbelief.

“The trickster,” the Mother Confessor said. “I told you that was our name for him.”

“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 tying 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.”

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 fegret 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.